A Devon council quietly backed a massive AI datacentre more than a year before anyone outside town hall knew about it.
Torridge district council in north Devon backed the project without public disclosure, according to documents obtained by campaigners through freedom of information requests. The papers show developer Xlinks had been in private discussions with the council well before the plan became public. Guardian reporter Sandra Laville broke the story after reviewing the released documents. The material made public so far does not include capacity or investment figures, just the timeline of contact between Xlinks and the council.
Local fights over datacentres are becoming a recurring feature of the AI buildout, as data-hungry infrastructure lands in places with little history of hosting industrial-scale computing. When a council negotiates with a developer behind closed doors for over a year, residents lose the chance to weigh in before positions are effectively locked in. That is the exact gap freedom of information law exists to close.
Whether Torridge council broke any rules is a separate question. On the transparency question, the FOI documents Laville obtained for the Guardian suggest the council came up short.