The Scottish Parliament voted 80-26 on 16 September, with 15 abstentions, for a motion that no planning or consenting decision on a data centre be taken until national planning guidance is published1. The text began as Green member Patrick Harvie's call for a full moratorium and passed as Labour member Daniel Johnson's amendment. The Greens abstained on their own amended motion.
A Holyrood motion states the Parliament's view and creates no legal duty. The instrument that binds is the planning Direction held by minister Hannah Mary Goodlad, who confirmed the same day that it covers applications already in the system as well as new ones. She called a moratorium "not necessary, not appropriate" and promised guidance by the end of the year, with a full framework within 12 months. Applications above 50 MW now need an environmental impact assessment (EIA), she said.
The Scotsman counts 24 hyperscale proposals (warehouse-scale sites built for the largest cloud companies) worth about 6,000 MW in Scotland's planning system, against 15 operating Scottish data centres, the largest of them 12 MW2. Apatura, behind ten of the 24, claimed on 21 September that five of its sites would employ almost 2,100 people3.
The Direction's nearest test is Edinburgh's Redheughs Avenue appeal, which ministers recalled in August and which now carries a full EIA. Its target decision date is 28 September.
