Secretary of state Angela Rayner has overruled a local council and granted permission to build a 90MW hyperscale data center in a former landfill site in Iver, Buckinghamshire.

The 72,000 sqm (775,000 sq ft) development at Woodlands Park, south of Slough Road, includes two buildings, ancillary office space, provision for emergency back-up generators on the ‘wings’ of each building and an electricity substation.

Buckinghamshire Council had turned down the proposal, from developer Greystoke Land and the UK arm of industrial services multinational Altrad, twice before.

In 2022, the local authority refused plans for a 163,000 sqm (1.75 million sq ft) data center campus spanning three buildings. Former Conservative Secretary of State Michael Gove upheld the refusal after it was appealed by Greystoke Land and Altrad UK, citing a lack of “very special circumstances” that would outweigh the harm of “inappropriate development in the green belt”.

The council then turned down a scaled-back planning application last year over similar grounds of inappropriate development in the green belt and harm to the air quality, protected species’ habitats and appearance of the area.

However, since the Labour government took office last year it has pledged to speed up data center developments, and Greystoke Land and Altrad UK appealed the decision, leading the council to hold a five-day public inquiry in December 2024. Following this, the planning inspector appointed by the Secretary of State recommended allowing the appeal and granting permission for the development.

The inspector concluded that the significant unmet need for data center capacity around nearby Slough, the UK’s busiest data center market, and the absence of alternative sites outweighed the harms posed to the local landscape.

Changes to the government’s planning policies in England in February now allow for development on so-called ‘grey belt’ lower quality green belt areas. This change has required local authorities to accommodate sites for data centers, which Labour has designated as ‘critical national infrastructure’.

This is the third time that Rayner has stepped in to approve the construction of a data center despite local opposition, including her recent decision to allow Greystoke Land to build a £1bn ($1.32bn) data center in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire.