A planning application has been submitted by Microsoft to build a data centre on the site of the former Skelton Grange power station in Stourton.
Data Centres house ranks of servers (computers) providing computer power and storage for ‘the cloud’ and for artificial intelligence operations. They require large quantities of electricity to run the servers and produce large quantities of heat which requires ventilation and cooling systems.
The plans show three buildings housing data halls, with offices and infrastructure including back up generators. In addition there will be an electricity substation and ancillary buildings on the site.
This is a hybrid planning application, seeking full permission for the data centre and outline permission for a warehouse and distribution centre on an adjacent piece of land.
Whilst the site is strategically placed to link into the national grid for electricity and there are large water mains nearby, the detailed papers indicate that connection for the volumes the data centre will require may not be delivered quickly.
Northern Power Grid will upgrade the electricity supply in stages, but only be able to supply the final power requirement in 2030-33.
Yorkshire Water have indicated that they will not be able supply the 100 litres per second requested for another two years and that in a drought situation the data centre would have a lower priority than residential properties.
A pre-application to the Environment Agency for abstraction of water from the River Aire has been submitted as a backup, but the council’s nature team have requested confirmation that:
“any water required for the operation of the data centre will not be extracted from the River Aire, and that any water used for cooling the data centre is not discharged into the River Aire.”
Due to the scale of the development the application will go to a Plans Panel of councillors in due course.
You can read the full application here and comment on it until Friday 21 November 2025.
Main image: the proposed data centre with the enfinium energy from waste plant (grey) behind and the warehouse distribution centre (black) in the foreground
While you’re here, can we ask a favour?
South Leeds Life is published by a not-for-profit social enterprise. We keep our costs as low as possible but we’ve been hit by increases in the print costs for our monthly newspaper which have doubled in the last two years.
Could you help support local community news by making a one off donation, or even better taking out a supporters subscription?
Donate here, or sign up for a subscription at bit.ly/SLLsubscribe
