TL;DR

Police Scotland has told the developer of a planned AI data centre at Larbert to expect substantial opposition and to put firm security arrangements in place. The warning came in a planning consultation letter this month and reads as among the earliest official admissions that UK data centre development now carries a public order dimension. Almost 7,000 objections have been lodged against the site.

What the letter says

The force expects considerable local resistance to the development, some 30 miles from Edinburgh, and urged the developer to work with officers to head off what it called unplanned incursions intended to disrupt. Police Scotland would not comment further. Over 100 people turned out at a protest in the town on Thursday, and campaigners have more planned — including an Edinburgh demonstration in early September, timed for the Scottish parliament’s return.

Local objections are specific, not abstract

Residents are not arguing about AI in the abstract. Michael Maciocia, who attended the protest, points to what the developer Apatura wants on site as backup power — 200 diesel generators — and to the neighbours: a 56-bed terminal-care hospice within 50 metres of one building, and Forth Valley Royal, an 860-bed hospital, inside 400 metres. The Edinburgh charity Action to Protect Rural Scotland warns about nitrous oxide reaching people living close by. Hazel McQueen, another neighbour, describes fitting hours of reading and organising around a full-time job, driven by worry for a grandson with leukaemia.

Apatura says it develops to world-leading standards on safety and the environment, and will keep working with the community and government through the process.

The strategic problem underneath

That same charity counts at least 23 hyperscale developments in the Scottish planning system. Together they would draw over 150% of what Scotland uses at peak — a figure that explains the objections better than any argument about AI itself. The SNP passed a motion this summer to freeze new data centres in Scotland. Should that become government policy, it collides directly with Westminster, which has been steering developers north.

Looking forward

Professor Cecilia Rikap of UCL makes the point that a data centre is simply where AI becomes visible enough to protest against. For UK developers, the practical lesson is that the site-selection calculus has changed: proximity to grid capacity now has to be weighed against proximity to hospitals, homes and an increasingly organised opposition.