A proposal to construct a 147MW data center in Slough, London, has been approved by the UK government.

The decision was made by the Secretary of State Steve Reed on June 10, 2026, who wrote that “the benefits of the appeal scheme are collectively sufficient” to balance out the harms of the project.

It is the latest in a series of data center projects that have been approved despite the objections of the local council.

In early 2025, developer Manor Farm Propco applied for planning permission to build a data center campus at the 74-acre Manor Farm, a part-greenfield and part-brownfield site located at Poyle Road that it owns.

Although Slough’s local authority has been broadly welcoming to data centers in the past – the area is home to the largest concentration of data centers in Europe – it argued that this proposal should be rejected on the basis that the parcel was considered part of the ‘Green Belt’, which is a planning designation that protects the land from certain kinds of development in order to prevent urban sprawl.

It also argued that there were suitable alternative sites in the Slough Trading Estate that had not been considered by Manor Farm Propco, and that Manor Farm could be used by Heathrow Airport as a freight forwarding facility in the future.

Sensing that Slough Borough Council was likely to reject the proposal, Manor Farm Propco appealed the case to the UK’s Planning Inspectorate in April before the council could reach a decision.

The appeal was accepted before being “called in” by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities, and Local Government, Steve Reed, giving Reed the power to make a final decision.

It was this decision that was published on Wednesday.

Manor Farm Propco argued that the part-brownfield status of the land made it “grey belt,” a new planning designation introduced by the Labour government that would make it easier for Green Belt land to be developed.

It also argued that data centers were vitally important to the UK, as shown by the government’s designation of data centers as critical national infrastructure in September 2024.

The Slough Borough Council can challenge the Secretary of State’s decision within a six-week time period. DCD has reached out to Slough Borough Council for comment.

Planning powers are typically in the hands of the local council, and it has historically been rare for the government to intervene directly on specific projects.

But the UK government’s bullishness on data centers has made it eager to support projects in spite of opposition from local authorities and residents.

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

Current Secretary Steve Reed has been following in Rayner’s footsteps, and his decision to ‘call in’ a 4MW data center proposal on the site of the historic Truman Brewery in London’s Brick Lane has sparked intense backlash from local residents and politicians.

But the government’s strategy was dealt a heavy blow in January after it admitted that it had made a “serious logical error” when granting planning permission to a data center in Buckinghamshire, making it likely that the decision will be quashed.

Manor Farm Propco is a company set up by real estate investment trust Tritax Big Box, which is also behind a proposal to build an 88MW campus in Chelmsford, Essex.