A 60-hectare data centre campus is planned by the Bowdon Roundabout, south of Lymm Road. See the plans at High Legh on 30 September, 4pm to 8pm.
A developer wants to build a data centre campus on about 60 hectares of farmland at Little Bollington, about two miles south-west of Altrincham town centre. The first public drop-in event is on Wednesday 30 September.
The developer, Innova, calls the scheme the Spodegreen Data Centre. The site is land south of Lymm Road, postcode WA14 4TP, north of the M56 and west of the A556 (Spodegreen Data Centre consultation site). Its north-east corner meets the Bowdon Roundabout.
It has an Altrincham postcode, but it is not in Trafford. The land is in Cheshire East, in the parish of Little Bollington with Agden (postcodes.io record for WA14 4TP). Cheshire East Council, not Trafford Council, would decide any planning application.
No application has been made yet. Innova’s timetable puts one in during 2026 or 2027.
What Innova says it would build
The proposal is a “campus-style” site where several data centre operators could locate side by side. The developer’s proposed development page lists:
- data halls holding the servers and plant
- offices and security buildings
- a district heating energy centre
- a “Living Lab” teaching space for apprentices and school STEM events
- a solar array on land west of Coe Lane
- rooftop solar panels, and solar canopies over parts of the car parks
- electricity substations and backup power generation
- landscaping and planting across the site
The 60 hectares includes the landscaping and ecological areas, Innova says.
The main entrance would use the existing access off Lymm Road and Chester Road. A second access further west along Lymm Road would be used “only in essential circumstances”, the page says.
The campus would take its power straight from the local grid. Cooling would be a “hybrid air and closed-loop water-cooled system”, which the developer says keeps water use to a minimum. It says it is looking at piping waste heat to nearby homes and businesses, but has not named any.
The numbers Innova puts on it
Innova says the campus would raise “circa £20 million additional business rates” for Cheshire East Council. Its website does not say whether that is a yearly figure or a total over several years.
It also promises “a significant number” of construction and operational jobs and apprenticeships with local colleges. The consultation site gives no job count.
A community benefit fund “is currently being explored”, the developer says. It has not said how big it would be or who could apply.
The land is Green Belt
Little Bollington’s own Neighbourhood Plan, adopted by Cheshire East on 31 August 2023, says the parish “lies entirely within the Green Belt” (Little Bollington Neighbourhood Plan, referendum version; adoption record). The plan names Spodegreen Lane, which runs between the parcels of the proposed site, as the lane serving the parish’s southern farmsteads.
The same plan sets two tests any large scheme here would face:
- Policy HLD1 says new development should “retain the sense of enclosure and high levels of tranquillity” and “conserve the uninterrupted skyline and wooded backdrop to Dunham Massey”.
- Policy HLD2 says harm to the setting of Dunham Massey, a Grade II* Registered Park and Garden around a Grade I listed house, must be weighed against a scheme’s public benefits.
A Neighbourhood Plan is part of the council’s development plan once adopted, so Cheshire East would have to take both policies into account.
Innova says it has already put the land forward through Cheshire East’s new Local Plan, including the “call for sites” earlier in 2026, and will keep promoting it there. That is a separate route from a planning application: it asks the council to earmark the land for development in its long-term plan.
What it means for you
If you live in Bowdon, Dunham Massey, Oldfield Brow or along the A56, this is the time to look at the plans. What Innova hears now can change the design before anything is submitted.
- Drop-in event: Wednesday 30 September, 4pm to 8pm, High Legh Village Hall, West Lane, Knutsford WA16 6LR. High Legh is about five miles south-west of Altrincham town centre. Parking is on the opposite side of the road.
- Comment online: the developer’s Have Your Say page has a feedback map. You click where you live and fill in a form.
- Email or phone: contact@spodegreendc.com or 0800 707 4103.
- Second event: Innova says a second in-person event will follow in winter 2026, with more detail after its surveys.
Comments sent to Innova are not objections to the council. If an application is made, Cheshire East will run its own consultation, and anyone can comment on it, including Trafford residents.
We will report when an application reaches Cheshire East’s planning register. For planning decisions on the Trafford side of the boundary, see our Altrincham planning news page.
Sources: Spodegreen Data Centre consultation website (home, Proposed Development and Have Your Say pages), read 25 September 2026; Little Bollington Neighbourhood Plan (referendum version) and Cheshire East Council’s adoption page; postcodes.io for the parish and local authority of WA14 4TP.
Have your say