Greenwich Council has set itself against a proposed data centre at Charlton Riverside before anyone has lodged a planning application, and the scheme’s backers have reached for a national argument: the government has made data centres Critical National Infrastructure. Helen Drew’s report for BBC News on 4 October lays out the collision, which we covered as news on Monday. This piece asks the question the news cannot: when a council has to choose between a data centre and homes, what does that designation actually put on the scales? Read against the government’s own announcement and the current National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), the answer is less than its users imply. In our view, the real contest runs through local plans, the grid and ministers’ call-in powers.
Strategic Reality: The CNI designation is a security and resilience status. Its September 2024 announcement does not use the phrases “planning permission”, “local plan” or “objection”. The planning weight data centres carry comes from the NPPF, and that same framework gives equal weight to homes.
Why does Charlton feel like a pattern?
Because it is the newest entry in a run of contested sites, at varying stages of the planning system:
| Site | Planning stage | What the dispute turns on |
|---|---|---|
| Charlton Riverside, Greenwich | No application yet; council opposed | Land the council wants for about 8,000 homes |
| Brick Lane, Tower Hamlets | Refused by the council, called in, approved in July | Housing pressure; a trading-focused facility |
| A127 near Wickford, Basildon | Permission granted; surveying seen on site | Green belt loss |
| Little Bollington near Lymm, Cheshire East | Not yet submitted | Rural land, flood risk |
| Chapelcross, Dumfries and Galloway | Lodged during a Scottish pause on hyperscale decisions | Energy demand, consultation |
Housing is at the centre of the objections only at Charlton and Brick Lane. Elsewhere, objectors have raised green belt loss, rural land, flood risk, noise, energy demand and consultation. What links them is how often a national-interest claim is brought into a local decision. When Basildon councillors considered the A127 scheme, a representative of developer Caineal described it as part of the country’s critical national infrastructure, according to the Echo. At Charlton, the project’s spokesperson made the same point to the BBC.
What does CNI status actually do?
The government’s 12 September 2024 announcement is specific about what designation brings: a team of senior officials to monitor and anticipate threats, faster routes to the security agencies, the National Cyber Security Centre among them, and help reaching emergency services if something goes wrong. The aim it states is to protect the data those buildings hold from outages, cyber attacks and severe weather.
Planning appears only in passing, to note an application in Hertfordshire submitted that day. The announcement says nothing about how planning applications for data centres should be weighed.
That matters because the shorthand has drifted. A BBC report in March said the designation gives data centres favourable treatment in planning, “meaning they can not be blocked by local objections”. Recent cases do not support the strong version of that claim. Tower Hamlets refused the Brick Lane scheme, according to the Guardian. The decision then moved to the housing secretary through a call-in, and the BBC reports it was approved in July. At Iver in Buckinghamshire, Angela Rayner overruled a council’s opposition to grant permission, and the government later conceded that permission should be quashed after admitting it had given inadequate reasons for waiving an environmental impact assessment.
Reality Check: Councils can refuse data centres: Tower Hamlets did at Brick Lane. What they cannot control is whether the decision stays with them. At Brick Lane and Iver, ministers took the final call.
Where does the planning weight really come from?
From the National Planning Policy Framework, whose current version was published on gov.uk on 17 August 2026. Its policies point in opposite directions with the same force.
Policy E1 tells development plans to provide, “where a need exists or is anticipated”, for facilities supporting data-driven and high technology industries, naming “data centres and associated generating capacity” and grid connections. Policy E2 says “substantial weight” should go to the economic benefits of commercial development, especially where it supports the Industrial Strategy or AI Growth Zones.
Policy HO7 uses the same words for housing: “substantial weight” goes to homes that meet the community’s evidenced needs.
| NPPF policy | What it says | Which side it helps |
|---|---|---|
| E1 | Plans should provide for data centres where there is current or expected need | Data centres, at plan-making |
| E2 | Substantial weight to the economic benefits of commercial development | Data centres, at decision |
| HO7 | Substantial weight to homes meeting evidenced need | Housing, at decision |
| DM4 | Emerging plans gain weight as they advance; prematurity refusals are limited | A council with a well-advanced draft |
| L1 | Do not reallocate land where its use is not expected to come forward | Whoever can show the allocation is stalled |
In our reading, the framework sets no national tiebreak between substantial and substantial. That pushes the decision down to two local questions: what the development plan says about the site, and how far the plan has progressed.
Greenwich’s timing problem
Here Charlton is awkward for the council. Its adopted plan dates from 2014, runs to 2028 and calls Charlton Riverside a “key regeneration area”. The replacement is still being drafted and, the BBC reports, does not yet name a use for the land beyond “mixed-use development comprising residential, commercial, and light industrial uses”.
Under policy DM4, emerging plans gain weight as they advance, and the framework says a draft not yet submitted for examination is unlikely to count as advanced. Refusing a proposal as premature is allowed only where the scheme is big enough to predetermine the plan and the draft is well advanced. A council whose draft is still being formulated cannot lean much on it.
Critical Context: The developer’s line that regeneration at Charlton has made “limited” progress is more than rhetoric. NPPF policy L1 tells plans to “Not reallocate land for its previously identified purpose where there is no reasonable expectation that the use will come forward within the plan period”. A regeneration designation that dates from 2014 invites exactly that argument.
In our view, Greenwich’s best answer is the one Tom Creswell, who leads on planning in its cabinet, has already sketched: plans for about 8,000 homes, better public transport and 1,000 jobs. The more of that the new plan can turn into allocations with a delivery path, the weaker the stalled-allocation case becomes.
The grid sits underneath both
In London the land question rides on a power question. The London Assembly’s Planning and Regeneration Committee found that since 2022 the grid in parts of west London, notably Hillingdon, Hounslow and Ealing, has reached full capacity, for a time stopping new housing schemes. Short-term fixes agreed by the GLA with National Grid and Ofgem got more than 12,000 homes connected by early 2025. The committee recommended that the government give data centres their own use class and that the next London Plan include a policy specifically on data centres. We could not confirm whether either recommendation has been taken up.
Nationally, the BBC reported in March that the government would consult on letting “strategically important” projects, including AI infrastructure, skip the grid connection queue. The Home Builders Federation warned that leaving housing out would amount to an “effective moratorium on new homes in areas where capacity is constrained”. Our March news report covers that exchange.
Hidden Cost: A data centre that loses on land use could still win on power. If grid priority goes to projects deemed strategically important, a council can protect a housing allocation in its plan and still find the homes cannot connect.
Who is affected, and how?
| Group | Exposure |
|---|---|
| Councils drafting local plans | The draft carries little weight until submitted; a stalled allocation is open to challenge |
| Residents near proposed sites | Concerns raised at Charlton (generator noise, energy use, housing shortage) are representations the decision must take into account, not a veto |
| Developers and operators | Substantial weight under E2, but the CNI label adds no stated planning weight |
| Housebuilders | Equal weight under HO7, but exposed if grid priority goes elsewhere |
| Ministers | Called-in cases, such as Brick Lane, are decided by government rather than the council |
What this means for councils writing plans now
In our view the practical implication is narrow but real. NPPF E1 already asks plans to provide for data centres wherever need is present or foreseen. A plan that identifies suitable locations gives the council something to point to when a proposal arrives on land it wants for homes. A plan that stays silent leaves the siting argument to be fought application by application.
Implementation Note: The London Assembly committee’s two recommendations, a separate use class and a dedicated London Plan policy, both aim at the same gap: getting data centre demand into planning before an application arrives rather than after.
What remains unresolved?
Need is hard to evidence locally. E1 makes provision conditional on need that “exists or is anticipated”. In London, the Assembly committee asked the GLA to publish its data centre forecasting results promptly, ahead of the evidence base for the next London Plan. The BBC’s Lymm report cites industry publications counting over 80 data centre plans lodged with UK councils from 2023 to 2025, but a count of applications is not a measure of need. Our September analysis found the national demand figures themselves on weaker footing than the argument built on them.
Scotland is taking a different route. Ministers in Edinburgh have agreed to hold back decisions on hyperscale data centre applications until national guidance exists, The National reports. Chapelcross was lodged weeks after that pause was agreed, and one campaigner called it “a test of the Parliament’s agreement”.
Environmental assessment is a live weak point. The Iver concession turned on why the government had decided no environmental impact assessment was needed. Campaigners had accused ministers of taking the developer’s environmental assurances too readily, and the government chose to concede their challenge in court.
What to watch
- Greenwich’s draft local plan. If it allocates Charlton Riverside specifically for housing and reaches submission for examination, DM4 gives the council firmer ground. If it keeps the open mixed-use wording, the developer’s stalled-regeneration case strengthens.
- Whether Charlton Gateway lodges an application, and whether it is called in. A call-in would move the decision from Greenwich to ministers, as at Brick Lane.
- The next London Plan. A data centre policy of the kind the Assembly committee recommended could give London a shared siting framework. Its absence would leave each borough to argue alone.
- Grid connection priority. If the final rules let AI infrastructure skip the queue without a matching provision for housing, the HBF’s warning becomes the test for every constrained borough.
In our view, Charlton is a better test case than most because the land really is contested between two uses national policy treats as equally weighty. The CNI label will keep appearing in developers’ statements. Councils and residents will do better to argue about the local plan and about who takes the final decision. At Brick Lane and Iver, the outcome moved when the decision moved from council to minister.
Sources and attribution
This analysis is based on Housing or data centre? London’s land-use dilemma, reported by Helen Drew for BBC News on 4 October 2026. Supporting sources: the gov.uk announcement of data centres’ Critical National Infrastructure designation (12 September 2024); the National Planning Policy Framework chapters on the economy, homes, land use and decision-making; the London Assembly’s press release on its Gridlocked report; Esme Stallard’s BBC report on grid prioritisation; the Guardian on Brick Lane and Iver; the Echo on Wickford; the BBC on Lymm; and The National on Chapelcross.
Analysis by Resultsense, making sense of AI in the UK.