The UK Government, not local planning authorities, will decide whether to give planning permission to a proposed 300MW data center in Buckinghamshire.

Although planning permission in the UK is usually determined by the local council, the Secretary for Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Steve Reed decided last Monday that the proposed data center would be considered a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP).

This allows the project to apply for a development consent order (DCO), which seeks planning permission directly from the secretary and effectively sidesteps the local council.

The ‘SDC M40 Campus’ is backed by investment firm SDC Capital Partners and utilities company Veolia, and it would see the construction of three 100MW data center buildings, an “energy center,” and auxiliary buildings on a Veolia-owned site located next to the M40 motorway between Beaconsfield and Gerrards Cross that is currently used as a landfill.

Both the data center and the energy center, which refers to an on-site gas turbine, were given direction to be treated as NSIPs.

But this does not mean that the project has been approved.

The NSIP designation was previously limited to energy, transport, water, and waste projects. But data centers are now permitted to use the NSIP regime following the passage of the Infrastructure Planning Regulations 2026 in January of this year.

The government has discussed allowing data centers to apply for a DCO since late 2024 as part of broader efforts to make the UK more amenable to data center development.

Data centers were designated Critical National Infrastructure in September 2024, giving operators access to additional support in the event of an emergency and placing them on equal footing with water, energy, and emergency services systems.

The government has been keen to push through data center projects, often overriding local councils’ decisions.

In December 2024, former HCLG Secretary Angela Rayner overturned a local council’s rejection to greenlight a 140MW development at the Court Lane Industrial Estate, also in Buckinghamshire. In 2025, Rayner did the same with two projects in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, and in Slough.

Although Secretary Reed has admitted that it made a “serious logical error” when granting planning permission to another data center in Buckinghamshire, the current Secretary has also ‘called in’ a 4MW data center proposal on the site of the historic Truman Brewery in London’s Brick Lane.

Founded in 2017, SDC Capital Partners is a US-based digital infrastructure investment firm. Most of its data center investments are in the US, but the firm also has a presence in Europe and Latin America.

Last November, the company bought 97 acres of data center-zoned land in Virginia for $615 million.