A COMPANY which plans to build on green space in Huddersfield has been accused of plagiarism.
Stirling Scotfield last week won permission to set up a data centre at Lindley Moor.
Kirklees Council planners gave the development the go-ahead after a stormy four-hour meeting.
The data centre off Crosland Road will provide businesses with a secure site for their computer servers.
But computer expert Sally Craig accused Stirling Scotfield’s agent ID Planning of plagiarising part of its proposal from a copyrighted document produced two years ago for a similar development in Wiltshire.
The 37-year-old said: “They have lifted two full pages verbatim. It undermines the bespoke nature of the Lindley Moor application.”
Mrs Craig, who runs Huddersfield IT firm Hotfoot Recruitment, discovered similarities between ID Planning’s statement and an application made by Pegasus Planning Group.
In 2009 Pegasus submitted a 32-page document to Wiltshire Council supporting an application to build a data centre at Solstice Park in Amesbury, near Stonehenge.
Pages 6, 7 and 8 of the Pegasus document are strikingly similar to page 8 and 9 of a statement submitted by ID Planning to Kirklees this May.
The 34-page document from the Leeds-based company outlines the economic benefits of data centres.
Both Pegasus and ID Planning’s statements say: “Although the majority of demand for data centre space has historically been around London, there is now a growing trend for more discrete locations.”
Both documents claim that companies which use data centres to house their servers include “major international corporations of considerable standing”.
Each statement promises that data centres are “the vital economic driver” which will “anchor and attract other similar or related technology facilities.”
Pegasus and ID Planning claim that a data centre will “widen” the attractiveness of Amesbury and Kirklees respectively.
Mrs Craig said: “It’s quite outrageous that ID Planning has copied its supporting statement from an application that was done more than two years ago.”
The Lindley woman added that ID Planning’s claim that a data centre would create 150 jobs was false.
“These places are run and managed remotely,” she said. “They don’t create jobs.”
