The datacentre revolt spreading across the US has reached the rolling hills of north Devon in an uprising against a planned hyperscale AI data campus in the middle of a globally protected landscape. Perched on an inland cliff, the town of Great Torrington has views that stretch for miles over the landscape of the Unesco biosphere reserve in which it sits, taking in the winding River Torridge and rolling acres of wooded valley and wildflower meadows. Pastoral and peaceful, its history was notably punctured by violence in 1646 when the royalists’ resistance in the first English civil war was brought to an end by the parliamentarian New Model Army in a battle fought out in the narrow streets in heavy rain and darkness.
Today, a very 21st-century threat is rippling through the same country lanes as the AI boom reaches the pubs, churches and parish halls of Great Torrington and its surrounding villages. The countryside that makes up the biosphere has been selected by a British company, Xlinks, to house a 1.5GW AI datacentre, one of the largest in Europe, as well as a vast 1.8GW battery energy storage system, or BESS. About 344 hectares (850 acres) of countryside have been secured for the huge campus, with five vast buildings ranging in height from 50 to 130 feet.
Listed buildings on the site, Xlinks says, will be relocated and transformed into a visitor centre. Such is the anger locally that the new campaign against the AI datacentre has drawn in tens of thousands of people, uncovered what campaigners say is evidence of secret deals and adopted tactics being used by activists in the US such as Erin Brockovich. A recent public meeting in Great Torrington was hosted by Elizabeth Humphreys of the US campaign group Not in My Valley.
She was one of the forces behind achieving a permanent datacentre ban in Coachella, California, over concerns about air pollution, water and energy use. People across the world are standing up and fighting back.” Today within the halls and pubs of Great Torrington and the villages of Huntshaw and Weare Giffard, the AI project is the main talking point. And the question being asked is: why here, in a protected UN biosphere, on productive farmland?
The proposal was first announced to the public this summer with a call by Xlinks for a collaborative approach. But adopting the tactics of veteran campaigners like Brockovich, people from the Devon Datacentre and BESS action group took to their keyboards – researching, rallying and requesting more information in a series of freedom of information (FoI) applications. What they uncovered fuelled the rising tensions.
Documents released under FoI revealed the company had been in closed discussions with council officials since March 2025. In April, the council issued a letter of “in-principle support” before any environmental statement or public consultation – and more than a year before the proposal was made public. Torridge district council told the Guardian the pre-application process was standard practice and was confidential.
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