Headlines
UK court gives go-ahead to challenge to large data centre
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on January 22, 2026
2 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on January 22, 2026
2 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
A UK court has approved a legal challenge against a data centre project near London, citing climate impact concerns. A full hearing is expected later this year.
LONDON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Britain's approval for a hyperscale data centre just outside London will come under scrutiny, after campaigners were on Thursday granted permission to bring a first of its kind legal challenge over the project.
Plans for a 90MW data centre in Buckinghamshire were approved by the government last year, after the local authority had refused permission.
ut British non-profit Foxglove and environmental charity Global Action Plan argued ministers failed to consider the impact on climate change of the vast amount of electricity the data centre will need.
Global data centre demand and planned projects have surged since ChatGPT was released in late 2022, as investors and governments bet on generative AI, increasing demand for electricity capacity to power the centres.
The groups' lawyers say the Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government (MHCLG) also failed to assess the "much larger amounts of additional electricity" to power and cool" computers, as opposed to the data centre's office functions.
Greystoke Land, which is developing the site, argued the project was lawfully approved and said the legal challenge should not go ahead.
But officials at MHCLG, in a letter to London's High Court this week, accepted permission for the project should be quashed as it was granted on the basis of climate mitigation measures which were then not secured.
The High Court granted Foxglove and Global Action Plan the go-ahead to challenge the decision at a hearing on Thursday, meaning a full hearing of their case is due later this year.
Foxglove and Global Action Plan say theirs is the first legal challenge to a hyperscale data centre in Britain.
($1 = 0.7449 pounds)
(Reporting by Sam Tobin, Editing by Louise Heavens)
A data centre is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems, which are essential for processing and storing large amounts of data.
Climate change refers to significant changes in global temperatures and weather patterns over time, primarily driven by human activities such as burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and industrial processes.
Sustainability is the practice of meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, often focusing on environmental, social, and economic factors.
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