THE GOVERNMENT has admitted “serious failure” in a decision to push through the construction of a hyper-scale data centre outside of London.

Lawyers for the government said project developers for the 775,000sq ft site in Buckinghamshire were not held to any climate commitments under current plans and that the projects should be “quashed.”

They acknowledged that the data centre’s developers, Greystoke, should not have been allowed to move forward with plans without binding commitments for reducing its environmental impact.

The letter was sent to environmental and tech campaigners at Foxglove and Global Action Plan, who were in court today arguing for the plan to be dismissed on environmental grounds.

Despite the government’s concession on Monday, the court case went forward after Greystoke, the third defendant, chose to continue with its legal argument defending the project.

A judge allowed the challenge to continue, with a further hearing to be held at a yet undetermined date.

In the letter, the government accepted that “mitigation measures” were not secured, calling it a “serious logical error.”

The claim against the project’s approval brought forward by the campaign groups “is arguable and the permission should be quashed,” the government said.

Foxglove’s Rosa Curling said: “For too long, ministers have been putting the profits of Trump-supporting tech billionaires ahead of the interests of the British public.

“There needs to be strict legal restrictions with teeth, and a mandatory Environmental Impact Assessment for each new data centre as a starting point.”

Global Action Plan CEO Sonja Graham called the letter an “embarrassing climbdown” and that it could have been avoided.

She said: “Silicon Valley abandoned its green sheen the moment AI data centres started to proliferate, which makes it all the more remarkable our government swallowed the AI Kool-Aid without a second thought for the impacts on people and planet.”

Foxglove recently said that the climate emission of data centres are on “the scale of an international airport” and, along with Global Action Plan and Opportunity Green, recently submitted written evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee asking for data centres to be included in the government’s carbon budget .

The groups’ evidence claims Britain has the third-highest number of data centres in the world, with about 100 more on the way.