GOOGLE DATA CENTRE
Many of you would have seen the proposals being put forward by Google for a new Data Centre on the eastern side of North Weald Airfield – a site allocated in the EFDC Local Plan for employment uses.
Google held a public consultation throughout July and August, wanting to hear your views about what was being proposed. They also held two public meeting on 12th and 13th July.
North Weald Bassett Parish Councillors wanted to hear your views about a possible data centre on the Airfield, and we conducted our own survey. The results are in!
There were a total of 77 responses as follows:
Yes- 44.16% - Responses included comments about new jobs, innovation, money to the area, less impact on traffic, good for local economy, and stops houses being built.
No – 55.84% - Responses including concerns about traffic, lack for jobs local people, not bringing anything to North Weald, what will happen to control tower, market traffic combined impact.
On 16th August 2024, the Parish Council submitted its response to the planning application that looks at the Environmental Impact Assessment Scoping report, which agreed which matters have the potential to cause an environmental impact. A full copy of the response can be found HERE.
The Parish Council is yet to formally respond to the consultation.
What is a data centre? A data centre is a facility with lots of computers that store and process large amounts of information. Every Google search you do is processed by servers in Google data centres. Google data centres enable our users to run their activities on top of keeping all of Google’s products and services up and running around the world. For more information, check out our Discovering Data Centres series: www.google.co.uk/about/datacenters/discover
Google contain information about their proposals on the project website at www.northwealddatacentre.co.uk