{"id":721039,"date":"2026-07-31T14:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/721039\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T14:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T14:21:08","slug":"controversial-brick-lane-data-centre-and-office-plans-approved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/721039\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial Brick Lane data centre and office plans approved"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labour minister Matthew Pennycook approved the scheme this week on behalf of Housing Secretary Angela Rayner.<\/p>\n

In the published decision, external<\/a>, Pennycook said Rayner “acknowledges the housing needs of the local community, and the strongly held local views on the proposals”.<\/p>\n

He added: “The secretary of state notes that a significant Bangladeshi population lives and works in and around Spitalfields and Banglatown.<\/p>\n

“She has taken into account community concerns around the potential impact of the proposals on this specific community.”<\/p>\n

However, he said Rayner had seen “no detailed evidence” that an alternative, housing-led development was feasible, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pennycook’s decision said the six homes for social rent had been “specifically designed to meet local housing needs and accommodate larger Bangladeshi heritage families”.<\/p>\n

But Tower Hamlets Mayor Lutfur Rahman, of the borough’s ruling Aspire Party, said Tower Hamlets was facing an “acute housing crisis, with over 30,000 households on the waiting list and thousands of families living in overcrowded conditions”.<\/p>\n

“Against that backdrop, development of this scale delivering only six homes for social rent falls significantly short of addressing local need,” he added.<\/p>\n

He described the decision as “a missed opportunity to deliver the social and affordable housing that Tower Hamlets residents urgently need”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour minister Matthew Pennycook approved the scheme this week on behalf of Housing Secretary Angela Rayner. In the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-721039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}