The UK Government has admitted that it made a “serious logical error” when granting planning permission to a data center in Buckinghamshire, making it likely that the decision will be quashed, reports Bloomberg.

Permission to build the Buckinghamshire data center was granted last July by Angela Rayner, the former Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The Buckinghamshire Council had already refused this specific data center proposal twice. But the applicants – developer Greystoke Land and the UK arm of industrial services multinational Altrad – appealed the decision to the Planning Inspectorate, a governmental agency that can reassess a given proposal.

In special cases, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government can ‘call in’ the appeal, giving the Secretary – not the Inspectorate – the power to decide whether to approve or reject the appeal after reading a report written by one of the Inspectorate’s inspectors. This is what Rayner chose to do.

When Rayner eventually granted approval to the project, legal non-profit organization Foxglove and environmental charity Global Action Plan challenged her decision by submitting a Planning Appeal in August. The pair were motivated by various concerns about data centers, including its impact on the environment and the potential strain on the local grid.

But on Monday, the Government Legal Department sent a letter, shared with DCD by Foxglove, saying that its own decision should be quashed.

The problem was that the inspector’s report had concluded that an Environmental Impact Assessment – used by planners to determine the impact of a development on the environment – was not necessary for the data center project, but that a “suite of mitigation measures” would be required in its stead.

“Not all of those mitigation measures, however, were secured,” reads the letter.

In a statement shared by Foxglove, co-executive director Rosa Curling said: “We’re encouraged that the Government now appears to recognise that blindly accepting tech companies’ magical promises about the impact of their data centers on our environment isn’t good enough. Instead, there needs to be strict legal restrictions with teeth, and a mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment for each new data center as a starting point.”

The decision has yet to be officially quashed by a court.

According to a spokesperson at Foxglove, developer Greystoke had refused to sign a consent order endorsing the Government’s concession letter, choosing instead to “continue with presenting a legal argument to the court suggesting the Government’s decision was correct.”

The judge allegedly “dismissed Greystoke’s argument” at the High Court on Wednesday, and the case will now go to a substantive hearing set to take place at a later date.

Greystoke has declined to comment on the matter.

This is a setback for the developers Greystoke and Altrad, who have been pushing for a data center in Buckinghamshire since 2022.

According to development plans, the data center would span 72,000 sqm (775,000 sq ft) at a former landfill site in Woodlands Park. The campus would include two buildings, office space, provision for emergency back-up generators, and an electricity substation.

This also comes as a blow to the Labour government, which has adopted a markedly pro-data center stance since being elected in the summer of 2024.

Data centers were designated critical national infrastructure in September 2024, giving them a level of support equal to water, energy, and emergency infrastructure in the event of an emergency.

In January 2025, the government then announced the creation of ‘AI growth zones’ across the country, which are areas that will “speed up planning approvals for the rapid build-out of data centers, give them better access to the energy grid, and draw in investment from around the world.”

Four of these zones have been announced at the time of writing. These are located in Culham, Oxfordshire; Cobalt Park, Newcastle; the area around Anglesey in North Wales; and the former Ford factory at Bridgend, South Wales.

The government has also been keen to push through data center projects like the Buckinghamshire facility that have been rejected by local councils.

In that regard, Steve Reed, the current Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, is following in former Secretary Angela Rayner’s footsteps.

In December 2024, former 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, the former Secretary did the same with two projects in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire, and in Slough.

The 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.

The government has also introduced a new planning designation – the so-called “grey belt” – which has made it easier for data center developers to apply for planning permission on the Green Belt, an older and more prohibitive planning designation that is intended to prevent urban sprawl around big cities.