Residents unite to show total opposition to the building of a Data Centre on Green Belt land.

The plan to build such a massive structure on Green Belt doesn’t just affect the residents of North Ockenden – if we allow this creeping industrialisation of our countryside, where will it stop?

Green Belt land was named as such in a bid to keep it safe and stop our communities from losing precious and vital wildlife and becoming concrete jungles. Now, it is a daily battle to stop local communities from losing such important land. Today, Havering Friends of the Earth write in the Havering Daily on the building of a Data Centre on Green Belt land.

Havering Friends of the Earth are totally opposed to the proposal to build an enormous Data Centre on beautiful, quiet, Green Belt farmland, in North Ockenden.

If this development is allowed, it will set a precedent, and we would then lose more and more of our Green Belt. The Green Belt forms the lungs of our city, providing clean air as well as rich wildlife.

We are dismayed that affected residents have only recently found out about these plans, although the council has been discussing them for nearly two years. 

The council is also using a mechanism called a Local Development Order, instead of a full Planning Application, which is another dangerous precedent as it involves quicker decision-making and less consultation. 

The data centre will take 10-12 years to build, and the impact of lorries during construction will be intolerable in these quiet country lanes.

The impact on the site, if it is built, would also be unacceptable: instead of farmland, there will be a large number of warehouse-sized buildings, containing banks of computers, batteries, cooling systems, backup power sources, and more equipment. It will demand a tremendous amount of electricity and enormous quantities of water, (the local supply is already inadequate), and flooding of the River Mardyke is likely to be made worse. Local residents will also be subject to a steady hum that in the US has caused stress and ill health, and to 24-hour security lights and guards. 

The plan to build such a massive structure on Green Belt doesn’t just affect the residents of North Ockenden – if we allow this creeping industrialisation of our countryside, where will it stop?

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