Torridge says no formal application has been submitted for Devon AI campus

Xlinks is proposing an AI data centre and battery storage development near Great Torrington in north Devon. Torridge District Council says the developer sought pre-application advice in 2025, but that no formal planning application for the campus has been submitted. The distinction matters: early discussions with planning officers are not a planning decision, and the council says it cannot accept formal public comments until an application begins the statutory process.

The big change

• What changed: The Devon proposal makes AI infrastructure a local planning issue before an application exists, with company-led consultation ahead of Torridge's statutory comment process.
• Why it matters: Feedback to Xlinks can inform the proposal before submission. Formal comments to Torridge enter the planning process after the council receives, validates and publishes an application.
• What to watch: Xlinks has yet to publish new dates for its postponed public information days. Torridge says it is preparing pages for pre-application correspondence. The next formal step will be submission and validation of the separate proposed applications, followed by their publication on the council's planning portal.

What the council has and has not decided

Torridge District Council's statement on the proposal says Xlinks approached it in April 2025 for pre-planning advice about a data campus. The council says the company also approached it about a battery energy storage system later in 2025. Council planning staff may involve other departments, including environmental protection and economic development, as part of this early process.

The council describes pre-application advice as confidential guidance to help an applicant prepare a proposal. It says the response can explain the criteria a proposal would need to meet and the issues an eventual application should address. The advice is not confirmation that a project is acceptable or that it will be approved. The same statement says Torridge is preparing website pages where copies of pre-application correspondence will be available; it gives no publication date for those records.

That distinction is central to the dispute. The Guardian reported on September 27 that documents obtained through freedom of information requests by campaigners showed discussions between Xlinks and council officers from March 2025. The report said a letter issued in April 2025 used the phrase “in-principle support” and described an email about stakeholder engagement. It also reported that protesters gathered outside a Torridge council meeting earlier that week to seek answers about the process. Torridge told the Guardian that the process was standard and confidential, and said pre-application advice was not confirmation of a proposal. We have not independently inspected the released correspondence, so those document details here are attributed to the Guardian's reporting.

The council's own current statement says no formal application has been submitted. It says any future proposal would first be validated, then published on the planning portal, where interested parties could comment through the statutory consultation process. Until then, the council directs residents to send comments to the company.

The company’s proposal is still being developed

Xlinks describes the Devon Data Campus as a proposed AI computing site near Alverdiscott, between Great Torrington, Huntshaw and Weare Giffard. Its project site currently presents the data centre and battery storage as separate projects, each with its own planning application. Xlinks says it is seeking outline planning for the data centre and full planning for the battery facility, with separate applications planned for the new year.

Xlinks says the proposed Valeon data centre would provide 1.5GW of AI-optimised compute capacity. This is a company-listed proposal, not independently verified capacity or evidence that the project has received planning permission or secured a grid connection. The company page reviewed does not state a battery capacity. The same site says public information days originally planned for July were postponed until later in the year. It has not provided replacement dates on the page reviewed for this article. Torridge's statement likewise says it was not aware of new consultation dates when it published its account.

On August 29, the Local Democracy Reporting Service, carried by the Crediton Courier, reported on FOI material obtained by a local campaign group. It quoted Xlinks describing earlier site layouts as preliminary and out of date, and not the plans it would submit. The report also quoted the council describing its pre-application service. This provides a second report of the documents and the parties' responses, but we have not reviewed the underlying FOI files or the early layouts ourselves.

Campaign groups have raised concerns about the proposed site's scale and its effects on farmland and the surrounding area. Those are campaign positions, not established planning findings. The council says there is no formal application to assess yet. Environmental effects, infrastructure requirements and the proposal's planning merits therefore remain questions for evidence and the eventual planning process.

What residents can do at this stage

For now, the available route described by Torridge is to contact Xlinks through the company's consultation channels. The developer's website says the consultation period has been extended and that it will hold public information days after further engagement and design work. It lists separate email contacts for the data centre and battery project.

The council says it cannot receive representations before formal planning begins. Once it receives and validates an application, it says documents will appear on its planning portal and public comments can be submitted through the statutory process. That later process is separate from the company's current engagement. A comment to the developer can inform its plans, but it is not a formal representation to the planning authority.

The project remains a proposal. The public record available at the time of writing establishes that Xlinks has sought early advice and is conducting its own engagement; it does not establish a planning approval or a formal application. This article is based on published council, company and reporting sources. BIG CHANGE did not visit the site, inspect the FOI correspondence or test any project infrastructure.