Could data centres undermine growth plans in Cambridgeshire?

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The question was put by Cllr Adam Bostanci (LibDems – Bassingbourn) – who also is the Chair of Climate Change & Environment Advisory Committee on South Cambridgeshire District Council

You can watch the video footage on the weblink in the agenda via the CPCA here

“More broadly, while national policy remains supportive of datacentre development, their rapid expansion could undermine the carefully balanced growth plans for our area. Whether through increasing demand on the electricity grid or rising carbon emissions, the growth of data”

You can also respond to the Government’s draft planning policy statement on data centres here – closing date 08 January 2027

“What was the response from the Committee?”

The points CPCA covered included:

The Government’s data centre covenant

You can read the covenant here

It has five subheadings which indicate the conditions in which new data centre applications will need to meet. These are:

  1. Lower electricity bills – new high demand infrastructure could drive up the prices other users pay for electricity. It will be interesting to see what proposals for renewables come attached to data centres.
  2. Invest in improving local communities – as the covenant states: “Strategic data centres should agree a Local Benefit Plan that commits to substantial investment, developed with the local community and linked to the development’s size. This can be spent on local priorities, like transport, parks and town centres.” This could be a signal for local councils and local community groups to start drawing up a list of things they think new data centres could fund – especially those areas where conversations about new data centres are already happening.
  3. Adhere to the highest environmental standards – transparency of information about data centre operations is significant here. The covenant also states: “Protect nature, minimise water use and publish annual energy and water consumption reports. They should also capture the heat they produce for nearby homes, schools, hospitals or businesses wherever practical, rather than letting it go to waste.” On reusing heat, I made a suggestion regarding the Cambridge Science Park and a new public swimming pool for North Cambridge several years ago.
  4. Create jobs, apprenticeships, and drive reindustrialisation – This is significant on the chronic skills shortages: “[Developers] should recruit locally where possible and invest in apprenticeships, colleges and universities. Where roles cannot currently be filled locally, they should invest in education and training to enable more local people to access these opportunities in the future.”
  5. Strengthen Britain’s security – “Data centres should provide secure, resilient UK access to compute for critical services and national priorities.”

Note that the Government’s offer to developers is:

“For sites that demonstrate sufficient strategic value, the government will:

  • reserve and reallocate connections. The Government will use new powers in the Planning and Infrastructure Act to prioritise strategically important demand projects,
  • dentify additional capacity.
  • accelerate connections before 2030
  • enable access to temporary power to bridge the gap to grid connections. The Government will develop a tightly controlled framework to permit on site generation until a grid connection can be secured.
The growing opposition to data centres

There’s a national march on data centres and AI on 05 December 2026 organised by the Pull the Plug campaign

“We’ve only seen the theft of copyright to create large language models, the rise of mass misinformation, pressure on our public services, invasions of privacy, and massive damage to the environment. And we’ve seen marginalised groups feel that impact much more harshly.”

Above – Pull the Plug campaign

Some of the issues will be for other policy areas of government – in particular OfCom and its departmental sponsor, the DCMS. Anyone wanting to campaign on those issues may want to ask their MP to find out what the Government’s positions are – if only to let local MPs know that there is local concern.

Cooling systems risks

This brings us back to the water crisis Cambridge faces – and this was discussed later in the meeting. (See my blogpost here). Cambridge found out the hard way why this is a growing issue.

The West Cambridge Data Centre

Some of you may have missed the growing importance of the West Cambridge Data Centre. The WCDC celebrated its 10th anniversary last year (2025)

One of the things the 2026 heatwaves and drought exposed was the limitations with the existing cooling systems of infrastructure – and in particular infrastructure dependent on cooling systems such as data centres.

“The University of Cambridge’s Dawn supercomputer was taken offline during the UK heatwave after a reported cooling-related incident at the West Cambridge data centre, exposing the operational risk that extreme weather poses to high-density compute.”

“Cambridge’s West Cambridge Data Centre has been undergoing upgrade and maintenance work across power and cooling infrastructure. The university’s documentation warns that unexpected service disruptions can occur during the course of the project and provides live status information for affected services. Many high-performance facilities are now being asked to support hotter workloads inside buildings and systems designed for earlier generations of compute.“

Above – Data Central, 07 July 2026

That final point should be put into the Combined Authority’s Growth Committee remit to ensure that resilience in the face of very hot summers (and the rising risk of flash flooding in periods of intense very heavy rainfall) are designed in from the start, and not left to future generations to deal with.

“Could the West Cambridge Data Centre’s excess heat be used to heat the water and any spa facilities at the long-delayed University of Cambridge Swimming Pool?”

Looking at the location of the data centre, it’s just down the road from the University of Cambridge’s West Cambridge Sports Centre. Also, note the lack of solar panel coverage on the West Cambridge site. Why?

“Anything on the Water Resilience Plan?”

I’ve linked to the above plan here. The meeting minutes show that it was:

RESOLVED: (Unanimous)

  • To recommend to the Combined Authority Board to agree the Water Resilience Plan
  • To note the approach to Resilience Funding.

Above – Item 7, CPCA Growth Committee – 03 Nov 2026 – in the video stream on the same page, the item starts around 35mins for those of you interested in the discussion

The first question put by the chair was: “What would you like to influence?” (i.e. what would the CPCA like to influence for the benefit for residents in the CPCA area?)

  • Supporting schools – providing teachers with information
  • Improving communication with residents – fewer but better rather than lots of unsolicited e-comms. Must include offline
  • Managing flood risk – and sewage
  • Fire risk – Holme Fen and other nature reserves in this era of droughts means the relationship between land and water is now much more significant than in times gone by.
  • Managing water demand – and public information/social marketing to influence people to reduce water demand / wasteful water use.

These are things you may want to follow up with local councillors

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to: