Credit: Mariia Berezovsky on Unsplash A council in north Devon backed a huge AI datacentre plan more than a year before the public knew about it. The documents were reported by Sandra Laville for the Guardian. Campaigners got the papers through freedom of information requests. They show the developer, Xlinks, had been in private talks with Torridge district council since March 2025.
The council sent a letter of support in April 2025, before any environmental study or public consultation. The council told the Guardian that such early talks are standard and confidential, and do not mean a proposal has been approved. Xlinks plans a 1.5GW AI data campus and a 1.8GW battery storage site on about 344 hectares near Great Torrington, in a Unesco biosphere reserve. The company puts the cost at up to £13.8bn and says the site will create 600 to 1,200 permanent jobs.
Local campaigners point to the protected countryside, the loss of farmland, water use, noise and fire risks from the batteries. North Devon is also still under a hosepipe ban after a record hot summer. One document showed that in severe heat and drought, the site could use about 2.9bn litres of water a year. However, Xlinks told the Guardian that figure came from an old design, and that the campus will mainly reuse water and top up from rain. “How can the largest and most costly infrastructure proposal in the nation be conducted almost exclusively in secret?” said Emily Clark of the Devon Datacentre and BESS action group.
Meanwhile, a national petition started by Devon county councillor Cheryl Cottle-Hunkin has passed 36,000 signatures. It calls for a pause on datacentres and battery sites outside the government’s AI growth zones. The government rejected the idea on 17 September. It said such projects already face planning and environmental checks, and that battery storage is needed to clean up the power grid by 2030.
Xlinks said it will design the campus with care for local people and nature. A public consultation planned for July has been put back to later this year, the council said. The fight in Devon follows a wave of datacentre protests in the US, where local groups blocked $130bn of projects in the first three months of this year.
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