‘People are standing up and fighting back’: the north Devon revolt against a vast AI datacentre

Plans for one of Europe’s largest AI campuses in a Unesco-designated reserve have sparked a fierce local backlash

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.