Dumfries and Galloway Council says it will keep individual public representations on a proposed AI data centre near Chapelcross off its planning portal until the notification period ends. The plan is for a campus of roughly 1GW, and the dispute is now about both its scale and how residents can see what others have told planners.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The proposal from CX Tech Limited is for eight data centres on land near the former Chapelcross nuclear power station. The National, in an article published on 11 October, reports that the council has received a significant volume of representations but will not publish them individually as they arrive. Instead, it says it will publish the numbers supporting and opposing the application, alongside a summary of the material grounds raised, when the notification period ends.
The article also reports that the Scottish Greens’ online action had gathered more than 5,000 objections in less than a week. That figure is not the council’s count of formal planning representations. The project’s developers say it could create 750 construction jobs, 40 apprenticeships and about 450 permanent direct jobs once operational.
Why it matters
This is a large proposed AI-computing development, not just another planning notice: the article describes a campus with capacity of about 1GW. Local residents and campaigners have raised concerns about land use and energy demand, while the developer presents the project as an economic opportunity. Those are competing claims about a project that has not been approved.
Withholding individual comments until the consultation closes may help the council process a high volume of submissions, but it also means the public cannot follow those submissions as they come in. The council says it will publish a summary and counts later; whether that gives people enough visibility is the live question.
Our read
The council’s stated plan is clear, even if the process is not particularly transparent in real time. A later summary can show the shape of the debate, but it is no substitute for being able to see the representations themselves. For a development of this scale, the quality and timing of public access deserve scrutiny alongside the headline capacity and jobs claims.
What to watch
- When the notification period ends, and whether the council publishes the promised counts and summary.
- How many formal representations the council records, separately from online campaign signatures.
- Whether the planning decision is affected by the reported pause on hyperscale data-centre decisions pending national guidance.
Discussion spark: For a proposal this large, should councils publish planning representations as they arrive, even when volume makes that difficult, or is a complete summary after consultation the fairer approach?
Sources and evidence
- Scottish council 'hides' public objections to plans for giant AI data centre – The National Scot (11 October 2026, 12:56 UTC)
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