# UK Data Center Planning Delayed by Inadequate Community Engagement, Report Finds

_Saturday, April 25, 2026 at 10:06 PM EDT · Infrastructure · Latest · Tier 2 — Notable_

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Data center planning in the UK is being delayed by inadequate community engagement, according to a report by British engineering consultancy firm Hoare Lea.

The report was published weeks after OpenAI decided to drop out of its £31 billion ($41.6bn) Stargate UK data center investment, citing that the right conditions such as the cost of energy and regulation had not been met.

Hoare Lea found that the average time to secure planning consent for a data center was 490 days based on analysis of 33 unnamed data center planning applications in the country. The longest planning time among the surveyed projects was just over five years.

Concern about the environment was cited as a cause of opposition in 32 of the applications, followed by poor community engagement and personal feelings around the application, both cited in 26 applications. The firm said objections related to the longest planning delays centered around lack of community engagement and no clear tangible community benefit, design issues, lack of local infrastructure, and concerns around energy and power supply.

Of the 33 applicants, nine were rejected. In all cases, rejection was attributed to a failure to meet local policy requirements, and in seven of them, concerns were expressed about the location of the site being inappropriate.

Data centers are becoming increasingly controversial in the UK as the government pushes for the country to take advantage of the AI boom. The government has made it easier for developers to sidestep local councils by allowing projects to apply for a development consent order, which seeks planning permission directly from the government.

## Sources

- [Data Center Dynamics](https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/data-centers-in-the-uk-stymied-by-inadequate-community-engagement-report/)

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Retrieved: 2026-04-26T05:42:20.431Z
Publisher: Tech & Business (techandbusiness.org)