The government has given plans to build a £9.5bn artificial intelligence data centre campus near Stewartby national significance, stripping Central Bedfordshire Council (CBC) of its final decision-making power.
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government granted a Section 35 Direction on 15 June 2026.
The decision means the proposed Quest Park Data Centre Campus will now be decided through a Development Consent Order handled by the national Planning Inspectorate.
Developer Questpit Limited, led by director David Kohler, wants to build four massive data centre buildings spanning 57.8 hectares within the former Hanson Brick clay quarry.
The total site floor space will reach around 178,600 square metres. That footprint is nearly 40,000 square metres larger than the film studio approved for the exact same pit in August 2023.
A fragile habitat under threat
Despite its industrial history, Quest Pit is an officially designated County Wildlife Site and a priority habitat under national environmental law.
It supports rare breeding birds, Great Crested Newts, bats, reptiles, and regional invertebrate populations. In 2022, Quest Pit was the only verified breeding site in Bedfordshire for the Bearded Tit.
No bespoke ecological impact assessment has been carried out for the new data centre scheme.
When Central Bedfordshire Council approved the Home of Production (HoP) film studio on the site in 2023, planning officers warned of severe ecological damage.
In his committee report that year, case officer Andrew Cundy said: “Given that the proposal results in the loss of the CWS and a loss of priority species, the proposal will cause substantial harm to a County Wildlife Site.
“Given the substantial impact to the CWS, it would be wrong to afford any environmental weight to the proposed development.”
He added that developing the pit resulted in a 48.78% loss of habitat units and breached local plan policies EE2 and EE3.
Councillors only approved the studio because they decided the economic benefits outweighed the environmental harm.
Bypassing local democracy
By moving the decision to a national Development Consent Order, campaigners fear environmental protections will slip through the cracks.
Campaign group Protect the Wild pointed out that Natural England will act as a statutory consultee for the process.
But Natural England oversees only statutory designations, and County Wildlife Sites have no statutory protection under national planning rules.
Glen Black from Protect the Wild told the Bedford Independent, “Quest Park’s location makes it a threat to a wide range of local wildlife, not least the Bearded Tit, which relies on exactly the type of habitat that the data centre development would destroy.
“The addition of a gas-fired power plant to the site will also increase the noise, light and greenhouse gas pollution of what remains.”
He added, “Local groups such as the Wildlife Trust and the Bedfordshire Birding Club already made strong arguments for why the previous development should not have been accepted.
“Now, Quest Pit is saddled with proposals that may cut even deeper into its ecology, and the ultimate decision has already been taken out of local hands.
“Quest Park’s proposals need proper scrutiny, locally and environmentally, before any work begins.”
Local representatives are also worried about how the massive development will affect surrounding infrastructure.
Cllr Sue Clark (Conservative/Cranfield and Marston Moretaine) said: “We already have two nationally significant major infrastructure projects.
“Universal and East West Rail, and the Marston Valley 5,000-housing development in a very small area of the Marston Vale.
“This development cannot be considered in isolation, which is the risk of going through a DCO process.”
Cllr Clark noted that her main concerns for the site include access to power, water supply, and construction traffic on local roads.
Power demands and carbon concerns
The campus requires an energy load of 1 Gigawatt to supply a 720 Megawatt IT load across the four buildings.
National Grid cannot connect the site to the main power grid until October 2034.
In the interim, the facility plans to run on an integrated, on-site gas-fired generating station powered by a 1.6km pipeline to the National Transmission System.
Environmental group Foxglove estimates that the on-site gas power station, alongside a similar project in Buckinghamshire, will produce 4.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions every year.
As reported by the Guardian, by comparison, ExxonMobil’s total UK carbon emissions in 2023 were roughly 3.9 million tonnes.
Developer forced to consult local people
Questpit Limited asked the government to bypass statutory public consultation requirements under Section 35ZA of the Planning Act 2008.
However, the Secretary of State explicitly rejected the developer’s request.
In a decision letter, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government senior casework manager Jamie Kam said: “Giving a direction would be inconsistent with the purpose of section 35ZA(5)(b), as currently applied.”
He noted that engagement equivalent to statutory consultation had not gone beyond conversations with Central Bedfordshire Council and National Gas.
The developer must now carry out a full public consultation before submitting any final application.
A history of stalled schemes
Questpit Limited director David Kohler purchased the land in 2015.
He described the data centre as critical national infrastructure which will bring investment to Bedfordshire in a similar way to Universal.
David Kohler previously promoted the Kohlerdome stadium for Luton Town Football Club in the 1990s, which failed to go ahead.
In 2007, outline planning permission was granted on Quest Pit for Nirah, a £174m aquatic research centre, which collapsed after failing to secure investment.
The approved film studio scheme also stalled early last year (2025) when construction firm ISG collapsed, and developer Verb Create Holdings was put forward for strike-off at Companies House.
Katya Baker, who worked as a consultant on the studio project under Quartermaster, told the BBC at the time: “It was a huge blow as I had put my everything into HOP.”
Economic reports from Volterra estimate the proposed data centre could create 710 to 1,145 direct operational jobs and up to £73m in direct annual gross value added.
David Kohler expects the application process to take two to three years, followed by two years of construction.
