Slough Borough Council, home to one of Europe’s densest data centre clusters, wants operators in the town to pay more towards local community projects, with contributions of up to £1m a year under discussion. The proposal comes as the UK government has yet to publish a promised national planning policy for data centres.

What is being proposed

According to a Financial Times report, summarised by Data Centre Review on 27 October, the council has put forward a framework under which operators could contribute £250,000 towards immediate community improvements, or up to £1m a year for larger schemes. Key details remain open, including whether payments would be voluntary and how they would be calculated. The council says it would design the scheme together with participating companies.

The move follows growing local pressure. A petition to the council with more than 1,000 signatures calls for a pause on new approvals until an independent impact assessment is carried out, citing a proposed Microsoft development near Langley station. Residents have raised concerns about electricity and water demand, noise and the loss of land that could otherwise be used for housing.

The numbers

• Scale: a January 2026 report published by operator Kao Data counted more than 30 operational data centres in Slough with around 1GW of capacity.
• Economic footprint: the same report estimated about 14,000 supported jobs, including indirect and induced roles, and more than £30m a year in business rates. Councils keep only around half of business rates, with the rest going to central government.
• Existing obligations: SEGRO’s planning agreement for its Slough campus includes £4.3m for highways and a £2m skills package; Equinix’s agreement for the former AkzoNobel site includes £2.5m for public realm, about £2.36m for local economic development and more than £1m for skills and training.
• Fast-track zone: a Simplified Planning Zone covering Slough Trading Estate, adopted in November 2024, lets qualifying schemes proceed without individual applications until November 2034.

The national picture

Slough is acting while national policy is still unsettled. In November 2025 the government said it would consult within three months on a dedicated National Policy Statement for data centres. That deadline passed in February. In a written parliamentary answer on 23 October, AI minister Kanishka Narayan said a draft would be published “in due course”, followed by consultation, Data Centre Review reported. The government is also still weighing whether to give data centres Critical National Priority status, which would add weight to the need case for major schemes. Large projects can already opt into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects regime.

Why it matters for modular and edge in Europe

Slough’s proposal is an early test of how community-benefit payments might work in an established UK hub. Flat annual contributions weigh more heavily on a small facility than on a hyperscale campus, so how the council calculates them, by megawatt, floor area or site, will matter to operators of compact and modular sites. A scale-linked formula would treat them more lightly; a per-site levy would not.

The wider lesson is that local consent is turning into a constraint alongside grid access. Smaller, factory-built deployments on existing industrial land, with lower water use and options such as heat export, may find it easier to show local benefit than large new campuses. Without a national policy statement, though, developers of all sizes face decisions made council by council, with terms that may differ from one town to the next.

Sources

• Kao Data: report on data centres’ contribution to Slough (20 January 2026)
• Data Centre Review: Slough pushes data centre operators to contribute more (27 October 2026)
• Financial Times: report on Slough’s proposal
• Data Centre Review: Government misses deadline for data centre planning consultation (26 October 2026)