Xlinks’ £13bn Devon AI data campus sparks local uproar

TL;DR:

• Xlinks plans an 850-acre, £13 billion ‘Devon data campus’ that would rank among the largest data centres in Europe.
• The company promises 650 to 1,200 permanent jobs and up to 3,500 during construction; residents cite water consumption, noise and the industrialisation of countryside.
• No formal planning application has been submitted; a consultation runs from 14 July to 11 August, but Xlinks has postponed its in-person public information days until later in the year.

Communities across the South West are mobilising against plans for an 850-acre AI data centre in Devon. Xlinks — the company best known for its Morocco-UK subsea power project — says the £13 billion ‘Devon data campus’ would house the GPUs and high-performance processors needed to serve AI workloads, arguing the UK’s reliance on overseas data centres creates data security risk and exports jobs and investment.

Xlinks points to the site’s advantages: a ‘Goldilocks climate’ that trims heating and cooling demand, proximity to planned offshore wind, strong fibre connectivity and available grid capacity. It promises between 650 and 1,200 permanent jobs, plus 2,000 to 3,500 during construction.

Residents’ objections centre on water, noise and scale. Data centres’ cooling appetite is well documented — larger facilities can consume water on the scale of a small town — and neighbours of existing sites have reported sleep disturbance and health complaints from the constant hum of cooling systems and generators. Xlinks says planning conditions, noise buffers and monitoring will keep the site within strict limits.

A now-familiar pattern

Devon joins a lengthening list of UK communities contesting AI infrastructure, from the 145-acre proposal dividing a Kent village to disputes in Fife and Lanarkshire. The pattern is consistent: national AI ambitions colliding with local planning, and companies promising jobs while residents question why rural sites are chosen at all. At 850 acres, the Devon scheme is by far the largest flashpoint yet — nearly six times the Kent site.

The postponement of public information days originally set for mid-July has sharpened local frustration, even as the formal consultation window opened.

Looking forward

Xlinks has yet to submit a planning application, and the consultation runs until 11 August. How this scheme fares will signal whether projects of this scale can clear England’s planning system on community consent — or whether the government’s appetite for sovereign AI infrastructure will require overriding it.