AI growth zones

The regime sits in early implementation. CP 1440 1 was published on 13 November 2025 alongside the North Wales designation 2, with Lanarkshire confirmed on 29 January 2026 through written ministerial statements HCWS1289 and HLWS1290 34. SI 2026/13 was made on 7 January 2026 and came into force on 8 January 2026 5; the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (SLSC) drew its draft form to the special attention of the House in its 39th Report 6. The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee Chair's correspondence with the Minister for AI and Online Safety on CP 1440 (December 2025) 7 confirms parliamentary engagement above routine scrutiny. On the energy side, the Electricity Network Connections (Designated Strategic Plans) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/223) 8 activate the s.165A Energy Act 2023 architecture under which the Independent System Operator and Planner (ISOP) must have regard to designated plans, and the Network Charging Compensation Scheme (NCCS) uplift consultation opened in July 2025 (HCWS869) 9 addresses the cost side. The DSIT AI Growth Lab call for evidence 10 is the regulatory-sandbox companion to AIGZs and has attracted regulator responses from the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner (BSCC) 11 and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) 12. The AI Opportunities Action Plan: One Year On report (January 2026) 13 places AIGZ delivery as a headline among 38 of 50 commitments now met.

The most material development since the start of 2026 is the Conservative front-bench focus on the OpenAI Stargate UK pause as a delivery risk. PQ 126560 from Sir Oliver Dowden (21 April 2026) explicitly tests the impact on the North East AIGZ 1, and the follow-up PQ 128686 (27 April 2026) probes whether Nscale will still invest 2 — DSIT's answers stress that there has been 'no change to energy pricing or the regulatory environment'. The SRA's response to the AI Growth Lab call for evidence (27 March 2026) 3 complements the earlier BSCC submission (8 January 2026) 4, indicating that the cross-economy sandbox proposal is now attracting structured regulator engagement. The first significant use of SI 2026/13 — the 16 March 2026 s.35 direction for Slough Holdings' Wapseys Wood data centre campus 5 — shows the new NSIP route in operational use, with the Planning Inspectorate now seized of a data-centre DCO. Adjacent planning-system reform continues via SI 2026/122 6 and SI 2026/350 7.

Three dossiers dominate the next 12 months. First, the resolution of the OpenAI Stargate pause: the Conservative PQ campaign frames it as exposing the North East zone's headline £30bn investment and 5,000+ jobs envelope 12, and any restatement of those numbers — up or down — will be the most consequential single signal on programme credibility. Second, the AI Growth Lab pathway: closure of the call for evidence 3 should produce a Government response and, potentially, a legislative vehicle for the cross-economy sandbox; the BSCC and SRA submissions show regulators are positioning to shape its scope 45. Third, the grid-cost track: the NCCS uplift consultation (HCWS869) 6 sits upstream of every AIGZ business case, and the new Designated Strategic Plans regime (SI 2026/223) 7 gives ISOP a statutory hook for AIGZ-friendly connection prioritisation. Watch for: (a) a further AIGZ designation beyond the initial four — MPs from Mansfield 8, Burnley 9, Teesside 10, Sutton Coldfield 11 and the Vale of Glamorgan 12 are all pressing for inclusion; (b) the first contested data-centre DCO examination following the Wapseys Wood direction 13; (c) any National Audit Office or Public Accounts Committee announcement on AIGZ value for money — currently absent; and (d) the next AI Opportunities Action Plan dashboard refresh 14 for delivery slippage against the 38/50 baseline.

Three uncertainties matter most. Headline numbers are exposed: the £100bn and 15,000-jobs commitments 12 are aggregate ministerial figures, and the OpenAI Stargate pause 3 is the first concrete signal that anchor investors may move. Devolved engagement is largely off-corpus: Lanarkshire 4 and the two Welsh zones 1 engage Scottish and Welsh planning and consenting law but no intergovernmental instrument is in the events list. Inferred from corpus gap: there is no published Government response to the AI Growth Lab call for evidence and no NAO value-for-money study — both would normally be expected on a programme of this fiscal scale, and their absence means independent scrutiny currently rests on the Commons Library briefing CBP-10315 5 and the SLSC 39th Report 6. Inferred from corpus gap: subsidy-control treatment of zone-level benefits is not addressed in any cited document despite obvious engagement of the Subsidy Control Act 2022 and TCA Title XI.