Executive Summary

• Hamish Docherty, Director at Fenton Fitzwilliam, examines what the UK can learn from Ireland’s data centre reckoning, amidst growing opposition to new data centre projects and what they need to do before local politics and activism force a blunter response.
• Scotland is already facing the sharp end of this with a call for a moratorium on data centres above 50MW, and Ireland went through the same cycle five years ago, which took for years to resolve. This is the future for the UK if they don’t close the public communications gap and work with Ofgem ahead of the new regulations coming into place.
• UK developers are now at a fork in the road; bolstering genuine engagement activity – at a national and local level – can the sector get ahead of growing levels of opposition that, coupled with the potential impact of devolution powers under Burnham, risks hampering plans for future developments.

Over 100 new data centre proposals are currently working through planning permission across the UK, with half expected to land in London and the South East of England. This is on top of the almost 400 sites already live across the UK.

And there is growing opposition to new projects: co-ordinated community groups, from Tower Hamlets in London to Auchtertool in Fife have submitted thousands of objections to new developments; non-profit group Foxglove successfully mounted a legal challenge against a 90MW site in Buckinghamshire; and activist groups, including “Stop Dirty Data Centres,” have mobilised protests outside the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Across the pond, last month, New York became the first US state to enact a moratorium on 50MW+ sites.

Objections range from concerns over pressure on resources – land, water and energy –through to a lack of transparency and inadequate community engagement.

Scotland is already at the sharp end of this debate. The Scottish Greens have called for a moratorium on data centres above 50MW, two councils have asked ministers to pause new applications, and last month the SNP’s own national council backed a temporary halt – putting the party running the Scottish Government on the same side as those calling for a ban. This is a preview of the pressure building across the rest of the UK.

Ireland went through a similar cycle five years ago. In 2021, its regulator, the CRU, responded to warnings that data centres could consume 30% of national electricity within a decade by imposing grid connection criteria so tight they amounted to a de facto ban. It took roughly four years to resolve when the regulator agreed a set of conditions to address some of the criticism levelled at the industry: developers now have to bring their own power generation or storage, prove they can feed power back to the grid, and pass a formal grid-stability test.

Ofgem is already moving – with or without the industry’s input

The UK doesn’t need an Ireland-style flashpoint to force regulatory change; it’s already under way. To address the lengthy electricity connections queue, last month, Ofgem proposed introducing a commitment fee worth 2.5-7.5% of project costs, refundable only once a facility was energised, alongside milestone tests developers must hit to stay in the queue. This is designed to weed out speculative projects as the pressure on demand connections grow. Meanwhile, later this year, Ofgem plans to examine how developers could build and own high-voltage transmission assets, potentially landing close to where Ireland ended up in 2025.

This is an early signal of the regulatory approach Ofgem is taking to one of the challenges data centres are creating. As critics cite other challenges, from resource consumption to community engagement processes, regulators may introduce additional (and costly) criteria for new developments. Those who ignore these early signals risk becoming locked out, while the rules get written without them.

What the industry needs to do now

First, engage with government and regulators proactively, not defensively, before local politics and activism forces a blunter response. Scotland’s coming debate over a statutory definition of a “green data centre” is one live example, but the same principle applies to any local authority weighing a large scheme: showing up early with technical detail and proposed solutions shapes decision-making – as a number of developers and business groups have recently done through an industry charter on sustainable data centres.

Second, work with the technical substance of Ofgem’s reforms rather than around them. The commitment-fee and milestone framework, and the emerging self-build transmission model, both reward developers who can demonstrate genuine grid readiness — on-site generation, flexible or staged energisation, proven grid-stability performance. These are solvable engineering problems, and the operators who solve them first will be fast-tracked through the queue while speculative projects are weeded out.

Third, close the community engagement gap directly. The evidence across UK planning applications is consistent: schemes with poor local engagement face the longest delays and fiercest opposition, and vague or absent explanations of water and energy costs are exactly what campaign groups organise around. Against the backdrop of record heat and drought across England and Wales, plain, early and specific communication is vital: explain what a project uses, what it returns locally, and how concerns have influenced the design.

Every developer with a UK pipeline is at a fork in the road now. Only by bolstering genuine engagement activity – at a national and local level – can the sector get ahead of growing levels of opposition that, coupled with the potential impact of devolution powers under Burnham, risks hampering plans for future developments.