Recommendations

1. There’s an urgent need for a data centre NSP 

Current central government guidance on such huge critical facilities is in our opinion inadequate. Government “calling in” locally rejected proposals adds to a lengthy process, and £40+bn of such investment critical to UK economic growth could need to progress. The key is to have developers and planning committees well-enough equipped to deal with the boom in data centre planning applications that are core to the government’s economic mission. Even with central government’s classification of data centres as critical national infrastructure, the Deputy Prime Minister continues to “call in” data centre projects that were rejected locally. “Calling in” even a significant portion of these could be an onerous and lengthy process. We believe that unnecessary bureaucracy might be eliminated by central government setting out its guidance in an NSP for data centre funders, developers and operators to follow within planning applications, and most crucially for local planners to confirm within those applications. 

We recommend that a data centre NPS is created setting out clear and unambiguous guidance for funders, developers, operators and decision makers.

2. NPS documentation is badly dated versus government strategies and targets and government’s proposed fix isn’t sufficient 

As evidence, no NPS was recorded as reviewed following the July 2024 general election. The worst recorded review dates were 2011 (1 NPS), 2012 (2), 2013 (1), 2018 (1), 2019 (1) and 2023 (1). Also, on content, DESNZ’s November 2023 energy EN-1 NPS guided on coal, in opposition to its Clean Power 2030 Action Plan which aims to “clean up a dysfunctional grid system by prioritising the most important projects”, “speeding up decisions on planning permissions by empowering planners to prioritise critical energy infrastructure”. 

NPS web-guidance published by the Planning Inspectorate incorrectly stated 12 instead of the 13 current NPSs (see Figure 1).

Its last review date was marked 2012 NPSs (see Figure 1).

Guidance for the minimum period for review is relatively vague. It starts from Section 6 of the Planning Act 2008 requires that “the Secretary of State must review each NPS whenever the Secretary of State thinks it is appropriate to do so”. The overarching web-based guidance for NPSs was silent on a review process. The Energy Overarching NPS ENE-1 guided that “it will be subject to review by the Secretary of State in order to ensure that is remains appropriate. (see Figure 3)

No such guidance was provided by government for the transport and water/waste infrastructure areas.

Most recent government intentions to update NPSs every 5 years lie beyond general elections and almost certainly miss changes in strategies, priorities, national and international issues possibly making NPSs untenable. One simple example is guidance on coal-fired power generation in ENE-1. 

3. NPS documentation is complex and burdensome and urgently needs simplification in order to support developers and planners 

NPS documentation contains unnecessarily complex variations of terminology around the critical “environment” area. Meeting government’s environmental targets, particularly as recently reset, is a critical aspect of planning and in our opinion should be authoritatively and simply defined. 

As evidence, generic administrative information like “What are NPS” is in 6 Energy NPSs but not in the Ports NPS. We recommend that such generic guidance is ripped out of each NPS and instead goes in an overarching NPS. Simpler authoritative user documentation and less review requirements result. 

Also, technical risk assessment tools/processes occur in variable language, length and content across NPSs e.g. for flood risk. Such tools/process guidance is already regulations and the National Risk Register. 

Also, the critical environment content is overly complicated by language, content and length variations across NPSs. As evidence, across the three NPSs in the water/waste area environment was described using 13 sections, which we have grouped into the following 8 themes: 

1. Air quality and emissions; 
2. Biodiversity and geological conservation; 
3. Environmental Impact Assessment, 
4. Environmental Net Gain and Environmental Regulation; 
5. Climate change mitigation - greenhouse gas emissions and Climate change adaptation; 
6. Habitats considerations, Interaction with the Habitats Directive and Habitats Regulations Assessment; 
7. Pollution control and other environmental consenting regimes; 
8. The appraisal of sustainability and Sustainability considerations. 

In our view, environment aspects within all NPSs could be simplified and made authoritative. A simpler, smaller set of key sub-title words could be selected, with their generic aspects and explained in the overarching NPS (see other answers for further considerations for the overarching NPS we propose). That overarching NPS could set out critical government environmental targets in a single, up to date and authoritative way. We would be happy to share further evidence of how the 13 variations for environment are used across the current set of NPSs

We recommend simplification of the NPSs, removing generic administrative or common technical risk content which instead can be moved into a new overarching NPS. Our recommendation is not limited to “What are NPSs”, flood risk or environment.

4. NPSs aren’t all in Welsh language and should be to better support developers and planners

As evidence, whilst the NPS guidance webpage stated NPSs apply to Wales only one of the 13 NPSs (the Airports NPS) was available to users in Welsh language. That status may not align with central government commitments and slow planning. 

We recommend that all NPSs are issued in Welsh language

5. NPS scope gaps lack simple directions for how funders, designers and operators can proceed in their critical infrastructure planning application. 

The scope of each NPS was not precisely stated as to what was covered and what was not. For example, the airport NPS limited itself to “South East England” addressing Heathrow Northwest and Extended Northern runways and Gatwick Second Runway specifically, yet stated “Other NPSs may also be relevant to decisions on airport capacity in this geographical area”. Furthermore, over £4.6bn of investment at other airports in England may go through other planning routes. The evidence is London Gatwick (£2.2 bn), Stansted (£1.1bn), Manchester Airport (£1.3bn), London Luton, with airports at London Southend, Doncaster Sheffield also potentially adding to this.

Direction is needed within each NPS to where planning guidance over excluded scope items is available – for instance, where guidance for northern England airports will be found by NPS users. Our recommendation does not solely concern airports, but also the energy and water/waste NPSs, and we would be happy to share such further evidence.

Our recommendation is not limited to airports, and we can share further evidence

6. NPS documentation is overly lengthy for users to digest and reviewers to review and there are simple ways to shorten them 

As evidence, the current NPSs overall totalled 1,361 pages; energy (730 pages), transport (278) and water/waste (353). Page count is of course somewhat of a blunt metric. Yet it does expose the task of consuming and implementing for developers and planning committees. In addition, it represents a daunting task for review, even per NPS, let alone per infrastructure area.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the nuclear generating plant NPS has the most pages; indeed over three times the count of NPSs in other infrastructure areas. The average page count is 85 pages (excluding nuclear). Eight of the NPSs are below 100 pages (see Table 2).

The key question is the extent to which the rules are clear within each NPS document 

If the NPS regime is extended to address additional critical infrastructure the planning task gets ever greater. 

We recommend that urgent attention is given to simplifying and shortening NPS guidance for users, biased towards criteria lists or checklists. Our recommendation extends to many other content characteristics. 

7. NPS Landscape/visual impact statements in our opinion do not readily turn into specific criteria for designers/decision makers but should do so 

As evidence, the Hazardous Waste NPS wants materials and building designs to be always carefully considered, which we consider is a given and hard to turn into a judgement criterion. 

Why Elcern Consulting Responded to the Consultation

Elcern Consulting is a boutique management consultancy that over the last five years has focussed on supporting data centre funders, developer, constructors, operators and customers. Within those five years we have seen huge friction build up in the planning process for new data centres. Given the critical importance of data centre to the UK economy under the new government, we aim to provide key insights on how data centres can navigate the planning process. Our consultation response is one of a series we are doing to support the streamlining and fairness of data centre planning processes. 

Disclaimer:

The above research note was prepared solely for an initial, draft, high-level perspective, based upon brainstorming sessions. It should not be taken as accurate or complete. It is purely a basis for discussion, relating only to its preparation date. Recipients should conduct their own research to reach any conclusions, decisions or actions.