The Scottish Parliament this week rejected a Green motion for a moratorium on new hyperscale datacentres, but amended it with a commitment to publish national planning guidance by Christmas, and a Labour clause that freezes planning and consenting decisions until that guidance lands.
The government amendment, put by public finance minister Hannah Mary Goodlad, passed by 72 votes to 32 with 16 abstentions on 16 September. A Labour amendment also passed, inserting text that no decision on planning or consenting should be made until the guidance and strategy are complete.
The outcome left the word “moratorium” off the statute book, but delivered much of the pause campaigners sought by a different route. Goodlad was explicit that she rejected the Greens’ framing. “We do not agree that there should be a moratorium,” she told the chamber. “That is not necessary. It’s not appropriate and it would send the wrong message to anyone looking to invest in Scotland.”
Goodlad’s amendment pledged the “swift creation of national planning and spatial guidance by the end of the year”, and she committed to move faster than Labour’s 12-month timetable. “We’re actually minded to support the Labour amendment today, but we think we can be more ambitious,” she said. “We want to come back with guidance on this in three months’ time, by Christmas.”
Alongside the vote, the minister confirmed a new planning direction requiring an environmental impact assessment for every datacentre application of more than 50MW, applying to new bids and to schemes already in the system. It took effect the following day, and followed an August direction requiring councils to notify ministers within seven days of any application exceeding 50MW.
The scale at stake had grown sharply. Computer Weekly’s analysis of Barbour ABI data put Scotland’s committed pipeline at 14 schemes totalling 2.4GW, up from four projects and 0.9GW in March – the fastest growth of any UK region. That sat inside a UK-wide committed pipeline of 173 schemes and more than 14.6GW.
Campaigners count a far larger number because they tally earlier stages of the process. The Scottish Greens and countryside charity Action to Protect Rural Scotland put the pipeline at 24 proposals with a combined capacity of up to 6GW, which the Greens said was more than 1.5x Scotland’s peak power demand. The gap between 14 committed schemes and 24 claimed proposals is itself a measure of how much of Scotland’s mooted pipeline remained speculative.
Labour’s Paul Sweeney, who moved the amendment, framed the question as one of national design rather than developer speculation. “Now we have 15 in Scotland, with 23 proposed,” he said, urging colleagues to build the sector “by national design and not by private speculation”.
Labour’s closing speaker, Monica Lennon, argued communities needed certainty that decisions would not slip through before the guidance arrived. “We need to have a pause to get that robust guidance,” she said. Goodlad countered that a standstill was effectively in place already: “It is highly unlikely that we will see decisions taken before Christmas.”
The amended motion imposed no statutory moratorium, so a council could in principle still consent a scheme before Christmas. Green MSP Mark Ruskell warned that three hyperscale applications were likely to be determined this year, including the Larbert site in Falkirk, where a pre-determination hearing took place on the night of the vote and the determination deadline was 4 October.
Pressure for a halt to datacentre projects has built since the summer, when the SNP’s national council backed a moratorium and Goodlad began intervening in individual schemes, such as ordering environmental impact assessments at Wester Hermiston and Auchtertool. The National Planning Framework 4 designation of “green datacentres” as priority developments sat at the heart of the fight, because the term still carries no binding definition.
For datacentre developers and the enterprise buyers that depend on them, the vote sent a mixed signal. It kept the door open to the UK’s fastest-growing datacentre market, but replaced the certainty of a moratorium with the uncertainty of a promise – guidance by Christmas, and no consenting decisions until it lands.
