Summary
- The UK government has allowed the recovered appeal for a data centre and BESS scheme at Manor Farm, Slough.
- The proposal includes a B8 data centre, battery energy storage, substation, backup generators, fuel storage, drainage, parking, and access works.
- The decision shows how data centre planning is moving into nationally watched infrastructure territory where Green Belt, resilience, and economic need are weighed together.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has allowed a recovered appeal for a data centre development at Manor Farm and land north of Wraysbury Reservoir, Poyle Road, Slough.
The decision covers an appeal by Manor Farm Propco Limited against Slough Borough Council’s failure to determine the application. The proposal includes demolition of existing buildings and redevelopment for a B8 data centre and battery energy storage system, with an ancillary substation, offices, associated plant, emergency backup generators, fuel storage, landscaping, sustainable drainage, car and cycle parking, and new and amended access from Poyle Road.
The government has published the decision letter and Inspector’s Report. The Inspector recommended that the appeal be allowed subject to conditions, and the Secretary of State agreed with that recommendation.
The case sits in one of the UK’s densest data centre markets and adds another planning decision to the country’s digital infrastructure pipeline. Slough is already a major west London data centre cluster, but further development remains exposed to Green Belt policy, local environmental concerns, power infrastructure, access, and cumulative impact.
Conditions carry the operational detail
The decision is heavily conditioned rather than open-ended. The published material includes obligations around access visibility, electric vehicle charging, refuse and recycling arrangements, cycle parking, and a Landscape and Ecological Management Plan.
The ecological management condition requires long-term design objectives, management responsibilities, maintenance schedules, biodiversity net gain delivery, prescriptions for management actions, annual work planning, responsible delivery bodies, monitoring, and remedial measures. The plan must run for no less than 30 years. Those obligations treat the data centre as a long-life land use rather than a short construction project.
The inclusion of BESS, substation infrastructure, emergency backup generators, and fuel storage also shows that modern data centre planning is not only about the building envelope. Electrical resilience, backup power, fuel management, drainage, traffic, landscape, and ecological mitigation all sit inside the consenting package. Each element can trigger separate technical scrutiny and community concern.
The appeal was recovered for ministerial determination, placing the scheme into a higher-profile decision route. Since data centres were designated as critical national infrastructure in the UK, large schemes have increasingly been assessed not only as local commercial buildings, but also as part of a national capacity, resilience, and economic infrastructure picture.
Slough remains a planning stress test
Slough has the advantages developers want: connectivity, established customer demand, proximity to London, and a mature supplier base. It also has the disadvantages that come with success: constrained land, heavy cumulative power demand, local opposition risk, and planning sensitivity around open land and strategic gaps.
The Manor Farm decision will be watched because it shows how government weighs data centre need against local and environmental impacts. The development plan policies referenced in the Inspector’s Report include spatial strategy, Green Belt and open spaces, and the Colne Valley Park. Those issues are increasingly common in UK data centre cases, especially where operators seek large footprints near existing connectivity corridors.
The BESS element also reflects a changing power strategy. Data centres are under pressure to manage load, provide resilience, and reduce grid stress where possible. Battery systems can support resilience and flexibility, while adding planning, safety, fire, and grid-interface considerations of their own.
The decision does not remove the wider UK bottleneck. Developers still face long grid queues, local planning resistance, transformer and switchgear lead times, and uncertainty over how widely data centres will use the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects route. It does show that large schemes in sensitive locations can still secure approval where national need, site circumstances, and conditions align.
For the Slough market, the appeal outcome reinforces a familiar reality. Demand for west London capacity remains strong, but every new scheme now needs a fuller infrastructure case: what is being built, how it is powered, how it is backed up, how it affects land and ecology, and how it fits into a cluster already carrying a heavy data centre load.
