Greystoke · Iver, Buckinghamshire data center, Buckinghamshire, England

Greystoke's plan for a 90MW data center on the former Woodlands Park landfill site in Iver, Buckinghamshire, next to the M25 and off Slough Road, has been in the courts since the United Kingdom government overruled Buckinghamshire Council's refusal in July 2025. In January 2026 government lawyers conceded that the decision contained a "serious logical error" and that permission should be quashed, after the campaign groups Foxglove and Global Action Plan brought a legal challenge. In April 2026 Greystoke, which had kept contesting the case, accepted that its measures to limit the data center's environmental impact must be made binding through a contract with the council.

The scheme is for up to 72,000 sqm in two buildings, each up to 18m high, on land south of Slough Road between junction 14 of the M40 and junction 15 of the M4. It is a cut-down version of a 163,000 sqm, three-building plan the Secretary of State refused in October 2023; Buckinghamshire Council refused the smaller scheme in 2024 on Green Belt grounds. Angela Rayner, then housing secretary, called the application in and gave the plans a green light, accepting that they would "materially alter" the character of the Green Belt land.

The council received 63 letters of objection to the 2024 plan, including from MP Joy Morrissey and Ivers Parish Council. The campaigners argued that the Government's decision letter gave only one paragraph to the facility's power and environmental cost and that no Environmental Impact Assessment had been carried out. "The reasons given by the Secretary of State [Ms Rayner] for considering the development did not require an EIA were inadequate," the government's letter said. Greystoke director Anthony Crean has called the Green Belt a "theological" concept that blocks developments in areas he believes are suitable for data centers.

"While we are very pleased to see renewable energy commitments introduced for Woodlands Park, at the end of the day the community is still having to tolerate being neighbours with Big Tech, without clarity on the need or utility of the development," said Oliver Hayes of Global Action Plan. The groups are calling for a mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment for every new data center and a moratorium until the Government decides how many are needed.

The Government has conceded that its approval was flawed, and Greystoke has accepted that its environmental measures must be made binding through a contract with Buckinghamshire Council; the campaigners called it a precedent for data centre developers' green claims to be concrete and enforceable.