Draft Infrastructure Planning (Business or Commercial Projects) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 General Committees

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. The Liberal Democrats broadly support the statutory instrument, but we have a number of issues to raise. One is that this measure should not mean the overriding of all planning policy. Indeed, green belt policy needs to be protected. Although we welcome the fact that an NPS is being developed, it would have been more helpful to see the draft of it at this stage. We encourage the Government to go further and consider a national policy statement for business and commercial projects generally, because they will have a big impact as nationally significant infrastructure projects.

There are significant opportunities with big business and commercial developments of data centres. Such developments enable the meeting of standards that cannot be met with smaller piecemeal development. With an eye to what we all must do—seek ways to drive down bills for householders—it is worth noting that there are 1.4 GW of data centres in the UK; that means 1.4 GW of heat. That heat is often the subject of agreements in which companies are paid to take it away, but it is free heat that could heat over 1 million households. We hope there will be a clear requirement in the national policy statement to ensure, as happens in other countries, that “waste” heat—which is free or has a negative cost, because sometimes a company will pay to have the heat removed from its site—is used in local networks wherever possible. We strongly encourage the Government to go down that route.

We also want the strategic spatial energy plan introduced so that there is a national overview of where data centres are located, with the proviso that under this statutory instrument the Secretary of State will consider, on a case by case basis, whether or not to direct under section 35 that a data centre is a nationally significant infrastructure project. We are content to support this measure, but we urge the Government to move forward with their national policy statement to ensure the provision of free heat from data centres to households and to defend key planning policies that must remain in place, such as protection of the green belt.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

As I said, the NSIP regime provides for local communities, local authorities, other statutory consultees and stakeholders to input into that process. In a similar way to how a local planning authority undertakes a period of consultation to enable views on a planning application to be expressed, the examination process under the NSIP regime—which all NSIP applications must go through—provides the opportunity for local communities and interested parties to make representations to be taken into account by the examining authority in examination of the application and by the Secretary of State when they come to decide whether to grant development consent.

In the time I have, I should respond to a couple of other issues that were raised. Power usage was a point made by the hon. Members for Orpington and for Taunton and Wellington. Energy and carbon footprint are a key issue for data centres. The sector operates under a climate change agreement to encourage greater uptake of energy efficiency measures among operators. The UK has committed to decarbonising the electricity system by 2030, subject to security of supply, and data centres will increasingly be powered by renewable energy resources.

Newer, purpose-built and modern data centres can provide compute at a higher efficiency than older, converted data centres, in terms of the amount of power they draw on, but data centres will play a major part in powering the high-tech solutions to environmental challenges, whether that is new technology that increases the energy efficiency of energy use across our towns and cities, or development and application of innovative new tech that takes carbon out of the atmosphere. We are, however, very conscious that data centres draw on quite a significant amount of firm power, and the Government will take that into account in making decisions as to whether individual applications go through.

Lastly, I should address heat, which the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington rightly mentioned. He is absolutely right to say that data centres produce a significant amount of heat. The technology exists to capture that heat and to use it in district heating networks, or to meet significant demand. There is potential, therefore, for the heat to be captured and used to further benefit than happens currently, but there have already been successful examples—which are worth highlighting—of using data centre heat for hospitals, homes and other uses. One such example is the use of a data centre to heat a local swimming pool in Devon. We will take that into account, as I am sure DSIT did in the drafting of its national policy statement and in its conversations with other Departments. However, I will ensure that the hon. Gentleman’s comments are brought to the attention of the relevant Minister.

[Gideon Amos]

I intervene simply to place on the record my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I recently undertook a study trip to Denmark to look at waste heat. I probably should have put that on the record, but it is in the register.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I hope the point is well made that, as part of the NPS process and more widely, we are engaging with developers and operators to determine whether the Government should be making further interventions that are necessary and proportionate to encourage the take-up of such solutions.