TL;DR

Dumfries and Galloway Council says it has received such a “significant volume” of representations on CX Tech’s data centre plan at the former Chapelcross nuclear site, near Annan, that it is departing from its usual practice of posting them online, the BBC reported on 15 October. It plans to release totals for and against, plus an outline of the reasons people gave. Sam Heughan, the Galloway-raised star of Outlander, has joined the opposition, and Scottish ministers have promised national data centre guidance by Christmas.

We covered the application when it was lodged at the end of September. The BBC says the plans have already drawn considerable opposition.

The jobs argument

Speaking on Channel 5’s Storm & Alexis, Heughan questioned how much of the value would stay in Scotland, saying the projects are built by US technology companies and “the benefits will go back to them”. He said permanent jobs after construction would be “very few”, raised concerns about building on agricultural land and protected grassland, and said a pause or moratorium was “the right way to start”.

CX Tech disputes the jobs point. It puts the jobs total at about 540 when the campus is operating and as many as 750 while it is built, and has described it as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity”. Chief executive Graeme Anderson said the site could bring well-paid work together with clean power and digital infrastructure. The company hopes to start next year, with a build of about eight years.

The policy backdrop

The Scottish government has turned down a Scottish Greens call to halt data centre applications until new national guidelines exist. Ministers have instead committed to publishing that guidance before Christmas and said no planning decision is expected in the meantime.

Looking forward

In our view, the guidance is now the deciding document, not the objections. A council that cannot publish its own consultation responses in the normal way is under pressure, but it is unlikely to decide before ministers set the rules. The two job figures, about 540 claimed by the developer against “very few” claimed by its critics, are the question the guidance will need to help planners test. For UK firms tracking data centre capacity, Chapelcross is a test of whether large Scottish sites can clear planning on any predictable timetable.