Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, when the National Policy Statement on data centres will be published for consultation.

The Government recognises that data centres facilitate the AI development and application that will be critical to the UK’s economic growth, resilience and technological leadership, and is taking coordinated action across planning, energy and digital infrastructure to support their delivery.

This year, the Government passed legislation that facilitates the direction of data centres into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) planning process. A forthcoming National Policy Statement (NPS) for Data Centres, to be published shortly, will provide a clear framework for the relevant Secretary of State to grant development consent orders to nationally significant data centre developments through this process.