Summary
- Scottish ministers have overturned Fife Council's earlier screening position and required an EIA for the Cato data centre.
- The proposed development near Auchtertool has been presented as a 600MW AI-focused campus.
- Planning assessment will pause while the developer prepares the EIA, followed by another period of public consultation.
ILI Energy will have to prepare a full Environmental Impact Assessment for its proposed Cato data centre near Auchtertool after Scottish ministers intervened in the Fife planning process.
Fife Council had previously concluded that an EIA was not required, but ministers have now issued a screening direction reversing that position. The council says assessment of the planning application will be delayed while the developer prepares the environmental material.
Once the EIA is submitted, the application will enter a further period of public consultation. The Scottish Government’s Planning and Environmental Appeals Division records the decision as issued on 17 August.
The Cato project is proposed on land north of Camilla Road near Auchtertool. Existing project and planning coverage describes it as a 600MW hyperscale data centre development, putting the scheme among the larger projects currently moving through Scotland’s planning system.
A project at that scale brings impacts well beyond the buildings themselves. The environmental assessment can be expected to examine the cumulative effect of electrical infrastructure, backup generation, construction, transport, drainage, noise, landscape, ecology, and other site-specific issues in more depth than the original planning material alone.
The ministerial direction also lands alongside a wider change in Scottish data centre oversight. Fife Council confirmed that planning authorities must now notify Scottish ministers of current and new data centre applications above 50MW.
The Cato application therefore sits directly inside the new threshold. DataCentral has already reported on Scotland’s decision to increase ministerial visibility over large data centre proposals.
The two developments together show planning policy catching up with the scale of the pipeline. Data centres were historically assessed through conventional industrial and commercial planning frameworks. A 600MW facility has a different infrastructure footprint from a warehouse or ordinary business park, particularly when its electricity requirement, standby-power system, mechanical plant, and utility connections are considered together.
The EIA process does not decide whether Cato will ultimately receive permission. It changes the level of environmental information that must be provided before the council can reach that decision.
That distinction is important. Requiring an EIA adds time and cost, but it can also reduce later uncertainty by putting environmental assumptions, modelling, mitigation, and alternatives into a formal assessment that consultees and the public can examine.
For the developer, the delay creates another programme dependency alongside power and procurement. Large data centre projects increasingly have to progress planning, grid connection, customer discussions, financing, and long-lead equipment orders in parallel, while avoiding commitments that become stranded if one part of the development path slips.
Scotland is attracting a large pipeline because of land availability, renewable generation, its cooler climate, and government interest in AI infrastructure. The same pipeline is increasing scrutiny over cumulative electricity demand and local environmental effects.
Cato will now provide an early test of that more interventionist planning environment. The next meaningful date will depend on how quickly ILI prepares the EIA and when Fife Council is able to reopen consultation on a fuller environmental record.
