The answer is unsurprisingly, and more often than not, someone close to the industry being scrutinised. Let’s follow the money and see where we end up.
Scotland’s National Planning Framework 4 includes green data centres within National Development 12: Digital Fibre Network. That does not grant planning permission, but it does give qualifying green data centres national support in principle before an individual application reaches a local planning committee. Objections therefore move to the detail: siting, design, environmental impact, mitigation and conditions. [1]
The bit that piques my interest is not just whether these sites get built. It is where the money originates from before they are built, who benefits as they move through the system, and who funds the people and institutions scrutinising the claims around them.
Development value can exist before operation
One of the more active companies in this market is Intelligent Land Investments Group plc, a Scottish company, number SC564296. Companies House records its nature of business as the construction of utility projects for electricity and telecommunications, a classification that says nothing about IT or data processing. [2] I guess telecommunications could be a tenuous description of IT, if you have a vivid enough imagination.
Before the plc was incorporated in 2017, ILI says it identified 160 small and medium Scottish wind projects under the Feed-in Tariff scheme and secured 96 planning consents from those. Not a bad conversion rate at all.
In December 2023 it agreed the sale of the consented 450MW Loch na Cathrach pumped storage project, then called Red John, to Statkraft, and sold a 50MW battery storage project at Balnacraig to EDP Renewables. [3][4][5] In November 2025 it announced The Stoics, three proposed hyperscale data centres across Fife, East Ayrshire and North Lanarkshire, with a planned investment of more than £15 billion. [6]
Consent does not guarantee a sale, and planning permission is no promise of a payday, but a development can acquire commercial value before it is operational.
Another example is Apatura in Ravenscraig. Apatura describes its proposal as worth £3.9 billion: a 550MW data centre on 160 acres of the former Ravenscraig steelworks site, with grid connections targeted for 2030. Its 2025 announcement projected £729 million in annual GVA and 2,399 long-term jobs, explicitly including direct, indirect and induced employment. [7] Those are the developer’s own estimates, not measured employment at an operating site.
So what does “jobs created” actually mean? Is that on-site staff, contractors, supply-chain jobs, indirect employment, or spending supported elsewhere in the economy? Verdant’s September 2026 briefing argues that the industry’s headline jobs figures are extrapolated from older aggregate data rather than measured at new facilities, and that techUK’s jobs-per-megawatt projections produce much higher figures than employment data from existing and planned facilities suggests. It puts existing UK data centre employment at roughly 4,400 direct jobs, against the 24,300 claimed by industry. [8]
My observation is not that data centres create no jobs, it is that the number changes substantially depending on what is being counted, and those distinctions tend to vanish by the time the headline is reported in local media. Don’t even get me started on the press and media, but I digress.
A place in the queue has value before anything is built
Ofgem’s July 2026 consultation proposed a Data Centre Commitment Fee of between £237,500 and £712,500 per megawatt, around 2.5 to 7.5 per cent of average project costs. The fee would be secured when a developer accepts a connection offer, refunded at energisation and forfeited if the project exits the queue early. [9]
Contracted demand connection offers rose from 41GW to 125GW between November 2024 and June 2025. Ofgem said in a press release that data centres accounted for at least 80GW of the queue, while the consultation referenced around 73GW. It also warned that a significant number of queued projects may never proceed. [9]
For context, Ofgem’s earlier Demand Connections Reform paper records peak electricity demand in Great Britain at 45GW on 11 February 2026. [10] That’s somewhat akin to a queue for the kettle, except several of the people in it may only be reserving a socket, not using it.
Ofgem is not predicting that 73GW of data centres will connect and draw power at the same time. Its concern runs the other way: that the queue contains projects which may never proceed.
Ofgem’s explanation is simpler. Consumers should not bear risks created by speculative projects occupying scarce network capacity. Responses to the consultation were accepted until 16 September; Ofgem’s consultation record lists it as closed on 17 September 2026. [9][11]
A viable place in the connections queue can therefore become part of the economics of a data centre project before a single server is switched on.
England has its own version. The Guardian reports that the government cited Nscale’s site at Loughton, Essex in 2025 as the “largest UK sovereign AI datacentre”. Nscale’s own January 2025 announcement said it would be live in Q4 2026 and would create 250 jobs over three years to run it. [20] By the Guardian’s report in September 2026, the planned debut had moved to 2027. The same report says UK Power Networks has reportedly told Nscale the local grid may not be able to supply enough power until the early to mid-2030s, a detail first reported by the Morning Intelligence newsletter, and UKPN declined to comment on the project itself. Nscale says it remains committed and is looking at generating power on site, while seeking a flotation the Guardian puts at $35bn, for a site the paper found in March was still a working scaffolding yard, since cleared. [21]
None of that points to wrongdoing. It is the same pattern: the valuation turns up before the socket does.
The scrutiny is paid for by the scrutinised
Companies House records two persons with significant control of iNHouse Communications: Dr Katherine Perrior, who holds a majority, and a corporate shareholder, Bunhill Limited. Bunhill was founded by Oliver Pauley, formerly a managing director at the public affairs agency Portland, and took its stake in the agency co-founded by Katie Perrior, Theresa May’s former communications chief. [12]
iNHouse describes itself as a public affairs and public relations agency. Its own recruitment material has listed clients including Google, YouTube and Openreach. [13]
The same firm provides the secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Data Centres, an informal cross-party group whose stated purpose includes scrutinising the challenges and opportunities facing the sector and making evidence-based policy recommendations. When the register was published on 23 February 2026, the secretariat was recorded as a benefit in kind worth £24,001 to £25,500. By the 29 June edition the entry had been updated to state that iNHouse is paid by Google and ARK Data Centres to act as the group’s secretariat, with the value revised to £39,001 to £40,500. [14]
The Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists’ guidance says an APPG secretariat can fall within consultant-lobbying rules where it makes relevant communications to ministers on behalf of the APPG or its funders and receives direct or indirect payment. [15]
What is not established here is whether iNHouse has made relevant ministerial communications on behalf of this APPG.
What is established, on the public record, is that an informal parliamentary group set up to scrutinise the data centre sector has its secretariat paid for by a data centre operator and a major technology company. None of this points to wrongdoing, but it is a structural relationship worth scrutinising.
The fact checker is funded, in part, by big technology companies
Full Fact corrected a widely repeated figure on data centre water use, and the correction, in this instance, was right.
The Times had reported Water UK figures of 14 million litres a day rising to 42 million by 2030. Full Fact pointed out that these were peak-demand estimates. Water UK’s average daily estimates were around 6.6 million litres at the time, rising to 19.8 million by 2030. [16]
Again, the question is not whether Full Fact should have corrected it. It absolutely should have, but it’s worth looking at who funds the organisation doing the correcting.
Full Fact’s funding page lists Meta at £342,712 in 2025, £353,475 in 2024 and £373,510 in 2023 for its Third Party Fact Checking Programme. It also lists Facebook UK Limited at £64,167 in 2025, the Tides Google.org Charitable Giving Fund at £205,978 and Google Ireland Limited at £154,131. Together, those four 2025 entries come to £766,988, about a quarter of Full Fact’s total 2025 income of £3,054,478, which also includes individual donors, charitable trusts and foundations. Full Fact states that its funders have no input into editorial content or decision-making. [17]
Full Fact also stated in October 2025 that it had received more than £1 million from Google the previous year, either directly or through funds supported by Google, before that support ended or was not renewed. [18]
The funding should not be hidden, and neither should Full Fact’s stated safeguards. The finding does not depend on Full Fact being wrong about the water figures, but the question remains: who pays for the checking?
No single official count exists yet
SPICe states that there is no single official source for the number, location or size of current and proposed data centres in Scotland. It cites an Action to Protect Rural Scotland map listing 26 proposals while noting that the list may not be comprehensive. [1]
Since 17 August 2026, Scottish planning authorities have had to notify ministers within seven days of validating any data centre application above 50MW. Since 16 September 2026, applications above that threshold must also be accompanied by an Environmental Impact Assessment. [1]
Even basic operating assumptions are contested. SPICe records a BBC report that most data centres use open-loop cooling requiring a constant mains supply, while Scottish Water says most rely on closed-loop systems requiring only minimal top-ups. Scottish Water’s figures, cited by SPICe, put the 13 operating Scottish sites at around 97 cubic metres of water a day, about 0.006 per cent of the 1.6 to 1.8 billion litres supplied daily. [1]
At UK level, another widely repeated claim says data centres currently use about 2.5 per cent of electricity and that consumption is expected to rise fourfold by 2030. The source is an April 2026 Science, Innovation and Technology Committee inquiry launch, where the figure appears in the chair’s statement. The page does not itself publish the underlying model, baseline or confidence range. [19]
The figure may well prove right, the problem is that a headline projection is travelling further than its method is being examined.
The pattern
The same pattern keeps appearing.
A development can acquire value before it operates and a place in the grid queue can carry economic significance before anything is built. An informal parliamentary group scrutinising the sector has its secretariat paid for by Google and a data centre operator. Meanwhile, a fact checker correcting public claims receives substantial funding from major technology companies, while stating that those funders have no editorial control.
On their own, these facts prove no corruption, collusion or improper influence, although they do show why “follow the money” remains a good premise when dealing with media and hype.
A piece I published recently, The Cyber Pandemic Was a Scenario. The AI Swarm Is Not. [22] asked who gets to decide what happens when the same increasingly interconnected ecosystem is building the capability, identifying the risk, proposing the controls and supplying the defence. That was about the model, this is about the physical infrastructure those models depend on, and this time the question comes with a postcode.
When the same names keep turning up behind the development, the queue, the secretariat and the correction, who exactly is scrutinising whom?
References
[1] Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe), “Data Centres”, 26 June 2026, updated 16 September 2026. spice-spotlight.scot/2026/06/26/data-centres
[2] Companies House, Intelligent Land Investments Group plc, company SC564296. find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC564296
[3] ILI Group, “About us”. ili-energy.com/about-us
[4] Statkraft, “Statkraft to acquire major Loch Ness pumped storage hydro project”, 15 December 2023. www.statkraft.co.uk/newsroom/2023/statkraft-to-acquire-major-loch-ness-pumped-storage-hydro-project
[5] EDP Renewables, “EDP Renewables acquires a 50 MW Battery Storage project from ILI Group”, 20 December 2023. edp.com/en/media/news/edp-renewables-acquires-50-mw-battery-storage-project-ili-group
[6] ILI Group, “ILI Group Launches The Stoics - A £15 Billion Green Data Centre Network Across Scotland’s Central Belt”, 4 November 2025. ili-energy.com/our-news/ili-group-launches-the-stoics-a-15-billion-green-data-centre-network-across-scotlands-central-belt
[7] Apatura, “Ravenscraig - plans to transform former steelworks into one of the UK’s largest green AI data centres”, 27 June 2025. apatura.energy/news-insights/ravenscraig-plans-to-transform-former-steelworks-into-one-of-the-uks-largest-green-ai-data-centres
[8] James Meadway, Verdant, “The Jobs Mirage of Data Centres: Minimal employment, maximal resource demand”, 9 September 2026. www.verdantthinking.org/publications-and-events/the-jobs-mirage-of-data-centres
[9] Ofgem, “Ofgem acts to free up grid capacity by tackling speculative data centre projects”, 29 July 2026. www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-release/ofgem-acts-free-grid-capacity-tackling-speculative-data-centre-projects
[10] Ofgem, “Demand Connections Reform”, Call for Input, 13 February 2026. www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2026-02/2026-02-12-Demand-Connections-Call-for-Input.pdf
[11] Ofgem, “Proposed data centre connection reforms”, consultation, 29 July 2026. www.ofgem.gov.uk/consultation/proposed-data-centre-connection-reforms
[12] Companies House, iNHouse Communications Limited, company 05738834, persons with significant control, find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/05738834/persons-with-significant-control; Companies House, Bunhill Limited, company 10677661, officers, find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/10677661/officers; PRWeek, “Ex-Portland MD’s agency takes stake in iNHouse Communications”, June 2019, www.prweek.co.uk/article/1582906/ex-portland-mds-agency-takes-stake-inhouse-communications
[13] iNHouse Communications, “Account Manager”, company recruitment material listing clients. inhouse.london/careers/account-manager
[14] House of Commons, Register of All-Party Parliamentary Groups, Data Centres, as at 23 February 2026, publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/260223/data-centres.htm; and as at 29 June 2026, publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/260629/data-centres.htm
[15] Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists, “Guidance on registration and quarterly information returns”, July 2023, section 6.2, Secretariats to All-Party Parliamentary Groups. registrarofconsultantlobbyists.org.uk/guidance/guidance-on-registration-and-quarterly-information-returns
[16] Full Fact, “Times figures for data centres’ use of water don’t reflect average daily demand”, 4 September 2026. fullfact.org/environment/times-water-data-centres
[17] Full Fact, “Funding”. fullfact.org/about/funding
[18] Full Fact, “Google cuts funding to Full Fact”, 16 October 2025. fullfact.org/technology/google-cuts-funding-to-full-fact
[19] House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, “Can low-energy computing help solve the AI energy crisis?”, inquiry launch, 16 April 2026. committees.parliament.uk/committee/135/science-innovation-and-technology-committee/news/213150/can-lowenergy-computing-help-solve-the-ai-energy-crisis
[20] Nscale, “AI hyperscaler Nscale to invest £2 billion in the UK data centre industry”, 13 January 2025. www.nscale.com/press-releases/ai-hyperscaler-nscale-to-invest-gbp-2-billion-in-the-uk-data-centre-industry
[21] Dan Milmo, The Guardian, “Construction of UK’s ‘largest supercomputer’ delayed over power supply problems”, 24 September 2026. www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/24/construction-largest-supercomputer-delayed
[22] Samantha Maeer, “The Cyber Pandemic Was a Scenario. The AI Swarm Is Not.”, contain.digital, 13 September 2026. contain.digital/blog/the-cyber-pandemic-was-a-scenario-the-ai-swarm-is-not