Cardiff's planners back a data centre. Will Welsh ministers take the decision?
Cardiff Council's planners back a data centre on a hospital park and ride site. Welsh ministers must first decide who has the final say.
What happened
Cardiff Council’s planners recommended a data centre on a park and ride site. No permission can be given until the Welsh Government lifts its order.
Cardiff Council’s planners said on that a data centre should be approved. The company Curtis Hall wants to build it on the Cardiff East park and ride site by the A48, near Llanrumney. Staff and patients of the University Hospital of Wales park there for free. The council has agreed to sell the land to the company. Its planning committee meets on .
The committee cannot give permission yet. On the Welsh Government ordered the council not to grant permission while ministers decide whether to take over the plan. Ministers would then make the final decision themselves. The council can still discuss the plan or refuse it.
More than 3,000 people wrote to the council about the plan, and one letter supported it. Seven members of the Welsh parliament, the Senedd, raised concerns. One of them, Dafydd Trystan Davies, is a minister in the Welsh Government. The plan includes a temporary gas power plant of 49.9 megawatts until a link to the national grid arrives, between 2030 and 2034. A plant of 50 megawatts or more would need permission from the Welsh Government. Curtis Hall denies it chose the size to avoid that.
The Welsh Government has promised its own policy on data centres before the end of the year. Planning minister Siân Gwenllian told the Plaid Cymru conference in October that data centres “must be on our terms”. Two Plaid members of the Senedd who asked ministers to take over say the issue “should be a question of national policy, not determined piecemeal”.
This direction prevents your authority only from granting planning permission; it does not prevent the authority from continuing to process or consult on the application.
Welsh Government letter to Cardiff Council, as reported by WalesOnline
Sources: BBC (2), WalesOnline (2, 3)
The Pattern
We looked for cases where Welsh ministers decided whether to take a planning decision away from a council or a national park. We found nine such decisions since 2011. Ministers took over three and left six to the local body. Each takeover came on day 85 or later. Days count from the first public step, such as the order not to grant permission or a council vote. Five of the six hand-backs came within 61 days. (BBC; BBC; BBC)
Show the other 7 cases
The Read
The order on the Cardiff plan has now stood for 76 days. In the past, every quick decision handed the plan back to the local body. Four past decisions were still open on day 76. By day 129, which is this time, ministers had taken over two of them. One more was taken over later, and one was handed back on day 179. The committee vote on is a new step: twice before, ministers handed a plan back within seven weeks of a local vote.
There are reasons for doubt. All nine decisions were made by earlier Welsh governments. The current government, led by Plaid Cymru, made one known decision of this kind, on a space radar in Pembrokeshire in 2026, and it took that one over. In the three past takeovers, the date of the ministers’ order was not reported. Ministers take over fewer than a dozen of about 25,000 Welsh planning applications a year.
Disclaimer
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