Details of Xlinks’ massive greenfield Devon Data Centre proposal disclosed following FOI requests

Campaigners against the giant data centre proposed at Great Torrington have discovered that the developers behind the project created detailed plans for the site some 15 months before even the scantest information was made public, and that their drawings show buildings many times the size of Exeter Cathedral looming over the town. 

A raft of documents obtained by the Devon Data & BESS Action Group under Freedom of Information rules show that the company behind the data centre proposals has corresponded and shared detailed plans for the site with Torridge District Council since March 2025, despite Xlinks telling the public and campaigners that many aspects of the project had yet to be decided. 

Devon CPRE and the Devon Data & BESS Action Group have been working together as campaign partners since June, when proposals first emerged about an 850-acre AI data campus, together with associated battery storage, on farmland between Great Torrington, Huntshaw and Weare Giffard. 

The action group’s Steering Committee has now received a stack of documents in response to Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) requests. 

Emily Clark from the Devon Data & BESS Action Groups says, ““In meetings to date, Xlinks has been very vague about the design of the Devon Data Centre – exactly where it would be sited, how the thousands of computers and millions of batteries would be cooled, and how much water would be needed, for instance – but these plans show that all of those issues have been fully thought through and were presented to Torridge District Council’s officers months ago.  

“The papers we now have show that the plan, as we feared, is for the two largest, 40-metre-high data halls to be sited on the rising slope above Great Torrington, looming over the town and visible for miles around. We have said they would be the size of Exeter Cathedral in a box; we now find that, while they would be the same height as the Cathedral, each would be many times larger.

“The only thing Xlinks still seems unable to answer with certainty is how the complex will be powered, unless and until they can bring their cables full of solar energy from Morocco. Without that, the Data Centre would consume almost half the output of the new Hinckley Point C nuclear power station.”

Steve Crowther, Chair of Devon CPRE, says, “The sheer scale of this plan is monstrous, and the site proposed is utterly unsuitable for industrialisation at all, let alone over this huge area of productive, beautiful and ecology-rich Devon farmland. We cannot let this happen, simply because it suits the convenience of a massive corporate investor.”

More than 2,500 people have now signed Devon CPRE’s Register of Objectors, which the charity is urging as many people as possible to add their name to: devoncpre.org.uk/data-centre-and-battery-field

Campaigners are currently reviewing the content of the new documents to assess their relevance to the ongoing planning process. The action group says it will share further updates as they become available.