This letter was written to seek information about the progress of a commitment o Scottish Government to provide guidance and support to planning authorities in the determination of Data Centre Development proposals.

chief.planner@gov.scot

barry.stalker@gov.scot

18 March 2026

Dear Chief Planner and Head of the National Planning Hub,

RE: Providing guidance and support to planning authorities over decisions on hyperscale data centres

We, with ERCS, wrote to the Minister Ivan McKee in December 2025 with our concerns about the lack of a definition of a ‘green data centre’, asking that hyperscale data centres be added to Schedule 1 of the EIA regulations, and that a proper analysis of the impacts on climate targets, grid and communities be carried out in respect of hyperscale data centres. 

The reply from the Minister contained a commitment that officials “will be working closely with colleagues in The Improvement Service and the National Planning Improvement Champion in the coming months to bring forwards tailored support and guidance to assist planning authorities in the determination of Data Centre Development proposals.”

Although this did not address the specific points we had made, we were hopeful that this would provide, at least some, information for local authority planners dealing with a whole new industrial sector, where there is a huge gap of information and policy.

We are, however, extremely concerned that there continues to be a lack of guidance and information, and progress has not been made in communicating how policy around ‘green data centres’ is to be interpreted and implemented. 

This was most obvious at the meeting of the planning committee at Edinburgh City council to decide on the Edinburgh Park data centre where the lack of a definition and guidance over ‘green data centres’ was very obvious. Council officials and councillors seemed to be relying on one sentence from the answer to a written parliamentary question (S6W-41362). 

It was later confirmed to me by civil servants that this was, indeed, the case and that no additional information had been provided for the council planning officials in issuing their advice, or to councillors in executing their decision making duties, and so they had one sentence of a PQ as information on the government position.

We are also extremely concerned about the webinar delivered by the National Planning Hub, ‘An Introduction to Data Centres’. We were hopeful that this would start to deliver the ‘tailored support and guidance to assist planning authorities in the determination of Data Centre Development proposals’ as laid out in the Minister’s letter. The objectives for the meeting were promising: 

• A high-level overview of data centres in Scotland
• Data centres from a planning perspective including the challenges and complexities
• Environmental regulation regimes that can be relevant to data centre proposals.

However, despite the event being run by the Scottish Government there was no speaker from the Government to explain and expand on the policy surrounding planning and data centres and it was, instead, left to two speakers from Apatura to fill 30 minutes of the 40 minute webinar, with 6 minutes for SEPA to speak at the end.  

The webinar turned out to be a 30 minute sales pitch by the Commercial Director and the Head of Planning for a company which has 2.3GW of data centre capacity at eight sites in planning or pre-planning. That is half of all the proposed hyperscale data centres that we are aware of and almost all of them are on Green Belt or greenfield/agricultural sites. Apatura, which was founded only four years ago as ‘Green Power consultants’ is not a data centre developer, we believe they work on a model of getting planning permission for sites and then selling them on.

It goes without saying that, if they were to get planning permission for these sites they would be set to make hundreds of millions of pounds in profit on their land speculations if they were to sell these sites on to US hyperscalers.[1]

As far as we can tell, this is the only CPD provided by the Scottish Government so far for planning officers around Data Centres and it was wholly inadequate for the task ahead. It seems completely inappropriate that an official, Scottish Government event for local authority planners should become an opportunity for an extended pitch by a developer which will reap huge financial benefits should their speculative proposals be recommended for approval by the planning officers attending the webinar. 

We believe that there are 15 or 16 proposals for hyperscale data centres in planning or pre-planning which could send in applications in the next few months making it an urgent task to fill the gap in policy, knowledge of the impacts, and guidance. As you know, we had asked for a moratorium on data centre decisions in our letter to the Minister so that this task had the time and space to be delivered. It would be very useful to have an update on what plans there are to provide the tailored support and guidance to assist planning authorities, which was mentioned in the Minister’s letter. I hope we could make some suggestions that could help. There will be lessons to learn from other countries for example Ireland and Virginia, US. For example, we found a presentation at one of our webinars from Julie Bolthouse, a Planner and Director of Land Use at the Piedmont Environment Council, Virginia, extremely useful for setting the scene on the planning issues around hyperscale data centres. 

I would be very happy to meet to discuss if you think it would be useful.

Yours

Kat Jones

[1] Amazon spent $700 million for 270 acres in Bristow, SDC Capital Partners purchased 97 acres at $6.3 million per acre, and BlackChamber Group acquired 38 acres in Gainesville for $160 million, according to a report by Cushman and Wakefield.

Response by email from Planning Directorate, Scottish Government:

Content of the email from a civil servant in the Planning Directorate

As we explained, we are indeed taking forward a programme of learning and exploring the issues that are coming to the fore in handling planning applications for data centres, led by our team at the Planning, Architecture and Regeneration Directorate – including the National Planning Hub and involving the National Planning Improvement Champion, Craig McLaren, and his colleagues at the Improvement Service. This is intended to support knowledge and understanding for planning authorities, and more widely across sectors, to support reasoned and balanced planning judgement in dealing with the proposals we understand to be in the pipeline. Exploring and understanding the issues together can inform what further assistance or guidance might be helpful.

The webinar you referred to was just one event in the work programme the National Planning Hub is leading in this area. For example, last week the Hub hosted a roundtable session in conjunction with Tech UK and Shoosmiths, which looked further into the emerging issues with representatives from planning authorities anticipating data centre applications, agencies and industry interests, and including presentations from across the sectors, including from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority in highlighting planning authority experiences.

In the initial engagements across the sectors, including the discussions with yourself and colleagues, we have naturally spent time listening to understand the needs and issues involved and are now shaping the next stages of the work programme to meaningfully support participants in the process, to consider with the next administration post-election.

I hope this is helpful meantime.