Another Data Centre in Park Royal?

Dear [MP Name], I am writing to you as your constituent about a policy gap that is directly affecting communities across the UK. In Park Royal, NW10, demolition began this month on a residential estate to make way for what will be the twelfth data centre cluster in the area. But this is not an isolated case, news around new development for more data centre such as in Southall, Slough, Brick Lane in East London, and the list of communities facing intensive data centre development goes on. Slough is already the world's second largest data centre hub, with residents reporting temperatures near the cluster running several degrees higher than surrounding areas during heatwaves. The health and environmental cost are being concentrated in communities that have the least power to push back. In September 2024, the government designated the entire data centre sector as Critical National Infrastructure. I understand why this infrastructure matters. But that designation was made before the full scale of AI advancement and before the massive demand for data storage would accelerate. AI, autonomous vehicles, cloud computing, and the digitalisation of healthcare and public services have all expanded that demand far beyond what was anticipated in 2024. The policy has now been outdated by this advancement and has not been reviewed since. What that 2024 designation brought was a planning fast-track and no mandatory environmental standards for many data centres. There are no requirements on heat capture, water efficiency targets, or cumulative impact assessment. And as of April 2026, there is still no National Policy Statement for data centres, despite these fast-tracks being in place since January 2026. There is also a fundamental transparency problem. When a data centre applies for planning permission under the CNI fast-track, there is currently no requirement to disclose what the facility will actually be used for — whether it serves AI model training, social media platforms, government systems, or commercial cloud storage. These uses have vastly different energy and water footprints. A facility training large AI models consumes orders of magnitude more compute than one serving general cloud storage. Without mandatory workload composition disclosure as a condition of the CNI designation, there is no way for communities, councils, or government to assess whether a development's environmental cost is proportionate to any genuine public interest it serves. Other countries have acted. Amsterdam banned new data centres until at least 2030. Ireland imposed a moratorium after data centres consumed over 10% of the country's electricity. Scotland is reviewing its own approach, and yet the UK gave the sector a fast-track instead. Therefore, I am asking you to push for the environmental audit committee's current inquiry into data centre sustainability to result in binding recommendations. We specifically ask that mandatory national green standards — including mandatory workload composition disclosure — become a condition of critical national infrastructure designation. If a facility cannot meet those standards, it should not receive the fast-track. Second, to ask the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology why there is still no National Policy Statement for data centres, and why the government has not committed to regular reviews of the CNI framework. Given the pace of AI advancement, a policy set in September 2024 cannot be treated as settled. At minimum there should be an annual review. Thank you for your time. [Your name] [Your address]