TL;DR

Preparations look to be under way at a £1bn data centre beside the A127 between Basildon and Wickford, roughly a year after Basildon Council approved it. Workers were seen surveying and mapping the land this week. Neither the council nor the developer, Caineal, has confirmed when construction starts or when the site will open.

What has been approved

The scheme is a 22-metre-high building near the junction with Old Nevendon Road. Planning papers point to 120 permanent jobs, a further 60 supported in the wider economy, and several hundred roles during construction. Building and equipping it is expected to cost upwards of £1bn. A separate 34-acre nature reserve, also approved, is meant to make up for the green belt land the building takes.

It is a smaller project than first proposed. Caineal’s 2023 plan was the size of 57 football pitches. It later submitted a reduced version in 2025, which was approved that September.

How it got through

Council planning officers accepted that losing green belt was justified by the national need for data infrastructure and a lack of suitable alternative sites, and pointed to its potential role in the growing AI economy. A council report described it as a draw for high-value technology firms.

Residents objected. Local councillor Eunice Brockman, who leads the Wickford Independents, expects pressure on local roads but welcomed the jobs, “as long as they are for local people”. Caineal’s John Bourne argued it would count as critical national infrastructure, and that Basildon could become “a powerhouse in the AI data economy”.

The Essex context

The surveyors’ arrival is a visible sign of activity, not a confirmed start. It comes days after reports that Nscale’s AI supercomputer site at Loughton, elsewhere in Essex, could wait until the 2030s for grid power. The Echo’s report does not say when the site will be connected to the grid, and that is the question likely to decide when a building actually appears.

Looking forward

For Basildon, the next markers are a confirmed construction start and evidence that the promised permanent jobs will go to local people, as Brockman wants. More widely, a consented site with no published power date is a reminder that planning approval is only one of the gates a UK data centre has to pass.