‘The leader Of The Council Speaks Of Protecting Our Green Spaces -Yet He Is Going To Actively Destroy 300 Acres Of Greenbelt Land If Plans For The Data Centre Go Ahead.’

‘This is land that is farmed at present, it has a wide variety of wildlife, and it is green and peaceful. In its place would rear up a dozen warehouse-style buildings, each one 21 metres high and surrounded by security fencing.  Constructing the site would involve dozens of lorries and masses of construction equipment, creating noise, pollution and upheaval for nearly 10 years!’

Havering Friends Of The Earth Respond To Councillor Ray Morgon’s Vision For Havering’s Future.

A response to Cllr Morgon’s Vision for Havering’s Future.

It is striking that, in Cllr Morgon’s description of his ‘Clear vision for Havering’s future’ – which has appeared in a number of outlets recently – the first thing he talks about is Economic Development and Innovation, and the first example he gives is the proposal for a data centre, and the last thing he mentions is the environment.

This extraordinary proposed development, of ‘the largest data centre in Europe’ no less, is still, after discussions going back to 2022, no more than a proposal. What’s more, despite all these years of planning, no one has yet found the ‘Very Special Circumstances’ that must be identified for this, or any,development on Green Belt land! 

It is simply contradictory for Cllr Morgon to speak of protecting our green spaces when the data centre would destroy 200 hectares, (over 300 acres, or 250 football pitches!) of Green Belt land. This is land that is farmed at present, it has a wide variety of wildlife, and it is green and peaceful. In its place would rear up a dozen warehouse-style buildings, each one 21 metres high and surrounded by security fencing.  Constructing the site would involve dozens of lorries and masses of construction equipment, creating noise, pollution and upheaval for nearly 10 years! 

I have film and photos of red-tailed kite, badgers and foxes in the area, and a local resident has shown me a very long list of all the birds they see – where will they go when all this is happening? And they won’t come back! 

As far as we can tell, the developers just don’t care. They have already disrupted the badgers, and in their ‘preliminary surveys’ they succeeded in churning up a public footpath, as well as dropping tonnes of hardcore on one of the fields.  

These ‘developers’ have never built a data centre, we don’t know which companies are likely to lease the buildings, and they have acknowledged that the number of jobs involved when the data centre is built are hardly worth mentioning – computers, after all, are designed to take jobs from people! Data centres also use up tremendous amounts of electricity and this huge one could well lead to power shortages in the area.

So much for the ‘economic development and sustainable growth’ that Cllr Morgon promises. The proposed data centre is nothing but a white elephant that would destroy a large area of Green Belt land. It must not be given the go-ahead. The Climate Action Plan and other environmental initiatives that Cllr Morgon mentions – tellingly as the last item on his list! – will do nothing to mitigate the damage caused should the data centre ever be built. The Climate Plan, and the Air Quality Action Plan, should have been updated years ago anyway, and the fact that they have not been updated shows just how much our council really cares about protecting our environment.  

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