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1. Brazil Proclaims a Result and Leaves Its Orders Unreferended 34,393votes cast after 5:00 pm under Brazil’s extension, 0.027% of turnout and far below the margin 2. The First Committee Clears All Four Military-AI Texts £490mwhat Table 6.1 of Britain’s Budget scores for AI over six years, against "over £700 million" in the text 3. Egypt's Grace Period Has Expired. The Regulator Says It Starts Now 13 Novembernew close of India’s 10,000-GPU tender, moved by an unannounced corrigendum 4. The FCC Has Not Ruled on AI Robocalls, and Says It Has No Plans To 77.9%turnout in Israel’s final count, published 30 October 5. Mexico's Supreme Court Parks 138 Biometric-CURP Appeals 163–5First Committee vote to "advance to negotiations" on autonomous weapons 6. Canada and the EU Write AI Conformity Into a Summit Text $25,000New York’s per-violation penalty for unsafe AI companion features, from 1 January 2027 7. South Australia's Royal Commission Opens With Six Themes and a Carve-Out 243→16South Korean local governments folding into sixteen regional platforms by end-2029 8. Beijing Certifies 21 More Personal-Information Auditors 0.478F1 of a clinical de-identifier on real nursing notes, against 0.994 on its synthetic benchmark 9. Islamabad Chooses Age Assurance Over a Ban 180,000Japanese officials being moved onto the Digital Agency’s agent tooling 10. New York's Courts Tell Lawyers How to Check What AI Wrote $0.47what a US federal agency pays for Gemini for Government per year, until 15 November Washington Writes ‘Super Intelligence’ Into the Rulebook $3,000Pennsylvania’s maximum civil fine under Act 99, from 21 December Brazil’s Platform Orders Outlive the Vote 6 hourshow often Meta and X must report reach to Brazil’s electoral court Israel’s Count Is Done; the Integrity Argument Is Not £456mUK AI security, procurement and capability commitments, to be confirmed at the Budget India’s 10,000-GPU Tender Quietly Slips to 14 November 2 Decemberwhen the EU nudification ban and the marking duty become enforceable Three Legislatures, One Chatbot Problem 14MWHumain’s Nvidia Blackwell Phase 1, from Q4 2026 Chile Keeps Boric’s AI Bill Alive While Kast Reserves a Rewrite 700disinformation complaints logged by South Africa’s Electoral Commission The Baselines Are the News: What Britain’s Red Book Scores for AI 27 OctIsrael votes under its first deepfake-disclosure law A Covenant and a Queue Jump: How the UK Will Pick Its Data Centres 54risks listed in China’s AI Safety Governance Framework 3.0, up from 30 €30bn+EU call for up to seven AI gigafactories 554deepfakes logged in Brazil’s first round; only 371 labelled 30+AI firms sent the first AI Act information requests 164AI-made ads in the US midterms, by one count 42signatories to Canada’s voluntary data-centre principles 174MWCape Town data centre now under appeal 83 dayswait reported under Medicare’s AI pilot, against a 72-hour standard 20home-grown foundation models backed by the IndiaAI Mission 2%of Turkish public investment budgets earmarked for AI
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A Covenant and a Queue Jump: How the UK Will Pick Its Data Centres

The Treasury's Data Centre Covenant trades grid priority and faster planning for five tests on bills, communities, environment, jobs and security. What binds, what merely encourages, who decides which projects count as strategic, and why the consultation record matters.

The Machine State desk
A dark-clad data centre building behind construction fencing and newly planted landscaping under a blue sky.
A data centre under construction in Cambridge, England, in 2014. Illustrative: the Covenant’s tests apply to new facilities nationwide. Photo: Hugh Venables, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

On 28 October 2026 HM Treasury published the Data Centre Covenant, a policy paper that offers data-centre developers a bargain: meet five tests and the state will shorten the wait for power and planning consent. The paper puts the UK’s 2030 need at 6 GW of AI data-centre capacity, carries no pound figures, and defers the question that decides who benefits: the government “will set out further details in due course on the definition of strategic data centres”.

What the five tests ask, and what a strategic project gets back

All operators are “encouraged” to meet the tests; only strategic data centres “must” meet them to qualify for government action. The asks are that operators pay “their fair share of energy”, agree a Local Benefit Plan “linked to the development’s size” on top of Section 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy obligations, design new facilities to a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of “1.3 or better”, reuse waste heat where a local user exists, report annually on energy and water, make “a meaningful contribution to the development and deployment of British AI hardware”, provide compute “including for our NHS” and work with the National Cyber Security Centre. The community test resembles Tasmania’s community-fund rules for AI data centres, except that the UK sets no formula, only a locally negotiated plan.

The return is institutional rather than financial. A new Ministerial Control Centre, chaired by the Minister for AI with Treasury and energy ministers, will “use the power of the state to accelerate time to power”. Using Planning and Infrastructure Act powers, the government says it will reserve future grid capacity, reallocate capacity freed when other projects leave the queue, and “facilitate transfer of pre-2030 data centre connections contracts to strategically important data centres”. A “tightly controlled framework” for on-site generation will be available “only” to “exceptionally strategic projects”. This is a more centralised model than Canada’s, where Ottawa left data-centre power to provincial regulators.

Ronan Lambe of Pinsent Masons, in the firm’s Out-Law article, said on-site generation “does not appear to represent a significant new benefit”, because current rules already allow it; his colleague Ian McCarlie said developers “will want much more detail”.

Which of the three documents has force

Instrument (28 October 2026)PublisherWhat it doesLegal weight
Data Centre CovenantHM TreasuryFive tests; Ministerial Control Centre; grid-priority measuresPolicy paper; relies on Planning and Infrastructure Act powers; “strategic” undefined
Written statement HCWS426, Responsible Water and Energy UseDepartment for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with the AI and energy ministersAsks operators to publish total and peak water and power use, PUE, energy reuse factor, carbonVoluntary; statutory reporting to be considered “if sufficient data is not provided”
Draft National Policy Statement for Data CentresDepartment for Business, Innovation, Science and TradeDecision framework for projects of about 100 MW IT load directed into the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) regime; “presumption of consent”Draft; consultation closes 8 January 2027; England only

The written ministerial statement puts current UK data-centre demand at “around 2 GW” and water use at “less than 0.2% of the non-household sector in England”, and notes that “water companies do not have to supply data centres with water”. The draft National Policy Statement is the one document that gains legal effect once designated under the Planning Act 2008. Its text sets an “indicative 100 MW minimum threshold” of rated IT load, asks decision-makers to be “satisfied” that a design meets PUE 1.3 or better, and cites the Compute Roadmap’s figure of at least 6 GW by 2030, “around three times current capacity”.

Why the queue is the real prize

Grid access, not planning, is the binding constraint. The energy regulator Ofgem said in July that contracted demand connection offers rose from 41 GW to 125 GW between November 2024 and June 2025, “driven largely by demand from data centre projects”, and proposed a refundable Data Centre Commitment Fee of £237,500 to £712,500 a megawatt to deter speculative schemes; the Covenant commits the government to “support implementation” of that fee. The draft NPS cites 73 GW across roughly 315 data-centre projects in the queue (Ofgem’s own release put data centres at “at least 80GW”), against about 2 GW operating. Reserving capacity for strategic projects means choosing winners inside a queue more than thirty times the installed base, by criteria not yet published.

What the consultation record shows

The Covenant promises communities “a meaningful say”. The record is thin. Zoned Out, a report by the campaign group Spotlight on Corruption built from transparency releases and freedom-of-information requests, counts 137 businesses represented at ministerial meetings on data centres from July 2024 to June 2026, two meetings with community groups, and none with environmental organisations; of ten local authorities and devolved governments covering the five AI Growth Zones, half reported no contact with ministers or senior officials beyond their applications. The Guardian, reporting the findings on 27 October, quoted a government spokesperson: “We want to work closely with industry, local authorities, environmental groups and communities, and welcome opportunities to hear their views.” Finland’s order to Google to pause groundwork pending permits shows how such a record gets tested.

What to watch

Whether the Covenant is rulebook or press release turns on three unknowns: the definition of “strategic” and its criteria; Ofgem’s final decision on the commitment fee; and whether operators report water and energy data voluntarily before the government reaches for the statutory framework it has signalled. Boards weighing UK sites against the EU’s gigafactory programme should price the queue, not the covenant.

Sources

  1. The Data Centre Covenant — HM Treasury, GOV.UK, 28 October 2026
  2. Data Centres: Responsible Water and Energy Use (HCWS426) — Hansard, House of Commons, 28 October 2026
  3. Draft National Policy Statement for Data Centres (consultation) — Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, GOV.UK, 28 October 2026
  4. Initial Proposal for a National Policy Statement (NPS) for Data Centres — Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, October 2026 (PDF)
  5. Ofgem acts to free up grid capacity by tackling speculative data centre projects — Ofgem, 29 July 2026
  6. Zoned Out: How ordinary people, public-interest groups, and local communities are being excluded from policy making on AI Growth Zones — Spotlight on Corruption, October 2026 (PDF)
  7. UK government met 137 businesses over AI datacentres – but no environmental groups — The Guardian, 27 October 2026
  8. AI Growth Zones (collection) — GOV.UK, 13 November 2025, updated with announcements to 3 February 2026
  9. UK Budget 2026: data centre covenant will inform development consent applications — Out-Law, Pinsent Masons, 28 October 2026

AI & GPP reports on how artificial intelligence and automation are changing the way governments decide, regulate and campaign. Corrections and tips: contact the editors.

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