Data Centres & AI Growth Zones in planning: Change on the horizon in 2026

At the start of 2025, the UK Government announced an ambition to transform the UK into an “AI superpower”. 

Since then, the Government has published its ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’, launched its Artificial Intelligence Growth Zones (AIGZ) initiative, and proposed new regulations to allow individual UK data centre projects to be treated as ‘Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects’ for the purposes of consenting. 

In its latest move, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has taken a further step towards the delivery of AIGZs by publishing its Policy Paper: Delivering AI Growth Zones. 

Through this Policy Paper, DSIT are proposing a package of measures to support the delivery of AI Growth Zones following the initial wave of identified Zones from earlier this year. The initial Zones are located in Oxfordshire, South and North Wales and the North East. 

Alongside planning reform which is the subject of this article, the measures include:

• support being offered to unlock the challenge of grid connections and energy prices for data centres;

• ensuring AI brings benefits to local communities; and 

• identifying public sector capital to support investment.

The Government considers the planning system as a major barrier to building large-scale AI infrastructure. Whilst DSIT acknowledge the Planning and Infrastructure Bill as a major step forward (expected to be made law imminently), DSIT’s stated objective is for their Policy Paper to go further than this, in order to ensure that development within AIGZs can move at pace.

Supporting TCPA Consenting

The current consenting process for data centres is under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (“TCPA”) which is supported by the National Planning Policy Framework (“NPPF”).

On the basis that AI data centres are considered by DSIT to be treated “like any other development”, the Policy Paper confirms the Government’s intention to consult on changes to the NPPF in the next three months. 

We now have sight of the NPPF consultation document, published on 16 December 2025, which consults on changes to the following effect:

1. Requiring development plans to set out a clear economic vision and strategy, taking into account local business needs and wider opportunities for economic growth, including in particular priority places for AI Growth Zones;

2. An explicit requirement to allocate sites to implement the economic vision and strategy over a plan period; including where a need exists or is anticipated, making provision for various industries including data centres;

3. Recognising the importance in policy of co-locating large-scale generators and users of power (such as data centres); and

4. Classifying data centres as “essential infrastructure” from a flood risk vulnerability perspective.

In addition, DSIT proposes to establish a national team of AI data centre planning experts that would be backed by a £4.5 million fund. The experts would provide advice and grant funding to local planning authorities (“LPAs”) that are considering AI data centre applications with a view to ensuring consistency in decision making and improving the pace of consenting.

Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project changes

The Government had already signalled in its Infrastructure Planning White Paper that it was considering bringing data centres into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIPs) regime, so that developers would be able to access either “regular” planning consents and/or development consent orders in order to deliver their projects (as applicable).

To support this, the Policy Paper sets out the intention to consult on a data centre-specific National Policy Statement to support Nationally Significant Data Centre Projects, including consulting on whether these should be considered “Critical National Priority” infrastructure with an associated positive weighting in the decision-making process.

The Government is already exploring through consultation whether it can cut NSIP consenting times, and notes this again in the Policy Paper, targeting a reduction of overall consent times to just 12 months from the current 18-month average. Parallel to AIGZ policy, the Infrastructure Planning (Business or Commercial Projects) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 when made law will allow data centres to enter the NSIP consenting process. These Regulations were approved by the House of Lords in November and await a final decision by the Secretary of State. 

It is noted that this consenting route is most likely to apply to an overall small number of projects that are of the scale required to be consented as NSIPs, but nevertheless the Government seems committed to opening up this regime to data centres, and has committed to “proactively work with investors to leverage this consenting regime in AI Growth Zones”.

Protecting land 

The Policy Paper commits to preventing conflicting development and providing investors with long-term certainty by using existing safeguarding powers to protect land for AIGZs in specific circumstances. This aligns with the 2024 revised NPPF which signalled central support for strategic sites - setting the policy tone for AIGZs. No legal or practical detail on the intended method(s) of safeguarding has been provided at this stage.

DSIT also proposes updates to the Consultation Direction, which requires LPAs to consult the Secretary of State before granting permission for certain types of development, to capture Ai infrastructure planning applications. These changes would enable the Secretary of State to pro-actively exercise “call-in” powers (rather than recovering appeals), so decisions can then be taken at ministerial level.

Hillside restrictions

The Policy Paper seeks to tackle issues slowing the delivery of data centres but, notably, there was no mention of tackling the challenges faced by developers in the context of the Supreme Court’s Hillside ruling. At the time of writing, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill does not address these challenges either.

The Hillside judgment means that incompatibility between consents can result in a consent becoming incapable of further implementation where there is a physical incompatibility with a later “drop-in” scheme of development. This does only apply where the original consent has been implemented, but there is no time limit on this principle. 

For the often large sites required for data centres, this can prove a real challenge for delivery where historic consents, which may never be completed, can create unforeseen interactions with future development. Hillside also gives rise to challenges where data centre development is “retrofitted” into pre-existing outline consents, where those consents are not entirely consistent with the proposed model of development.

Closing thoughts

The Government is clearly committed to supporting delivery of data centres, and in the planning context they appear to be pulling all available levers to promote and advance ambitious projects in this space. It is also notable that the Policy Paper identifies these proposals as “the floor”, rather than the ceiling of ambition.

As we move into the New Year, we will be anticipating consultations on the new data centre NPS and the conclusion of the NPPF consultation process, as well as details of how the Government intends to shorten NSIP consenting timescales and what the new data centre delivery service will look like. 

Our team has particular expertise in the consenting and delivery of data centres, so please do reach out to Matthew Tucker, Olivia Heininger or Gary Soloman if you have any queries. Burges Salmon will also be providing a number of further updates on digital infrastructure and the data centre market in the coming weeks and months. 

We will move fast to implement this ambitious programme of reforms, but we want to go further. We will continue to engage with industry and adapt as technology evolves to make the UK the best place in the world to build and deploy AI responsibly - DSIT

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/delivering-ai-growth-zones/delivering-ai-growth-zones