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Scottish village to be ‘terrorised’ by 115ft data centres
Jul 6, 2026
Protests are being organised over plans to build a supersized AI data centre beside a small village in Scotland, LBC's learned. The 'Cato' site neighboring sleepy Auchtertool in Fife would be comparable with some of the world's biggest data campuses in the likes of Nevada. Its total power capacity of 600MW would be just 50MW less than the 'Citadel' there, and projections suggest it could use up to 4000GWh every year, equivalent to the energy used by half of all households in Scotland. It could also use the same amount of water every year as 239 homes. The ILI Group behind it has indicated it would build a complex of data hall buildings - some the same height as eight double decker buses (35m) - within a proposed site the size of 100 football pitches. That would be bigger than the entire village of just over 200 homes it would sit beside. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #alanZycinski #datacentres #ai #protest #debate #news #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
The jaw-dropping is absolutely horrific
0:02
Like a tower block of flats laid on its side, in the middle of the countryside
0:07
It's mind-boggling. It's in the megacities like Las Vegas, where everything is super-sized and super-scaled
0:14
or the American desert, where colossal structures are a faraway dot in the empty landscape
0:21
where you are most likely to come across some of the world's biggest data centres, at least until now
0:28
So this is Octor Tool. It's a small village in Fife. It's got about 200 homes. It's got a village hall, a primary school and three bus stops
0:39
And this is the proposed location right next door for a hyperscale data centre
0:46
It would include six massive data halls up to 115 feet high
0:52
It could use the same amount of water in a year as 240 homes
0:57
and the same amount of energy as half of every household in Scotland combined
1:03
The ILI group whose application for this is now being considered by Fife Council
1:08
say it would be part of a £5 billion job-supporting, economy-boosting investment
1:15
which does seem to fit with the Prime Minister's hopes of making the UK an AI superpower
1:21
That is our path. Britain leading this new revolution in technology with our firms at the front and our people at its core
1:32
So the site that's been proposed starts in that back corner there
1:42
You can see the village of Octatool is just beyond, so it's about less than half a mile away to the village centre
1:48
It skirts along round, cuts off behind those trees because that's a small protected wildlife area
1:57
It goes along the lower bank there and then heads west towards Moss Moran
2:05
It comes up around the trees, back along the edge of the wind farm
2:12
straight across the top of Halliard's Castle, which is not a protected monument but has great historical history and stories attached to it And it finish just next to the battery storage area here And you can see houses down there
2:27
How close is this actually going to be getting to the village itself? It's not like it's going to be miles away
2:31
I mean, even where we're standing, we're pretty close to the village. I think the plans suggest that the nearest residence
2:36
which is over the hill, is 300 metres away from the edge of the site, and we reckon that the village centre is probably about less than half a mile from here
2:43
Can't even get the thought properly into my head of this ginormous, I don't know, USS Starship or something
2:53
you know, just being dropped into this field beside us. And for 600 metres, it's just crazy
3:02
The scale of the development, the amount of energy, the amount of water, the impact on the surroundings
3:08
I think there's a statement somewhere that it says the structure will fit in with the surroundings
3:14
because we have some wind turbines. We have Moss Morin and we have a battery storage area
3:19
I don't think any of them are 35 metres high and solid
3:24
So we've actually come down now to the bottom of that hill where Andrea and Pat were pointing out that row of houses
3:30
that's going to be right on the edge of where this data centre would be
3:35
I'm told that one of these homes is a log cabin that's used as an Airbnb
3:39
run by two gentlemen, Jonathan and Michael. We're just going to try and get down there, see how they're feeling about this
3:46
So that's the cabin here on the right hand side. The centre would be there and it would be literally, the entrance to it would be a hundred foot from there
3:57
Right outside. Right outside, I mean literally right outside across the pavement
4:03
It's very hard to visualise what it'll actually look like but it will definitely be there and extremely intrusive and will dominate the area
4:10
I mean, the size of the cabin, I don't know how many metres tall it is, maybe you would
4:15
know better than me. Well, the house is 15 metres from the ground to the top of the chimney
4:19
That house there is 15 metres? 15 metres from the ground floor to the top of the chimney
4:23
So these data centre buildings would potentially be twice as tall as a four-storey house
4:29
It will have an impact. I mean, if it goes ahead, it'll have an impact. It could be basically a fatal impact
4:33
I mean it could be massive in terms of bookings in terms of what we could charge in terms of ongoing reviews because the reviews from guests are very important The environmental impact assessment hasn been done as far as I aware either As far as we understand Fife Council decided that environmental impact assessment wasn required
4:54
I mean that sounds astonishing. You find it absolutely crazy really, don't you? You find it absolutely crazy the fact that
5:00
an environmental impact assessment was not required for something of that size
5:06
this thing is going to be enormous i mean it's like it's going to be like it's going to be like
5:13
a block of flats laid on its side like a tower block of flats laid on its side in the middle
5:19
of the countryside and right outside and right outside i don't like right outside i don't okay
5:25
so now we're heading to the village hall where there is a community meeting happening about all
5:30
of this i'm told it's going to be absolutely packed out hundreds of people in attendance
5:35
pretty much the entire village. So the water usage, I mean, I read online that they say that they're going to use 279 residential homes
5:46
That's absolutely absurd. I'm sure you've seen the videos of people in Arizona and other places in the United States
5:52
that no longer have water pressure through their pipes anymore because of this
5:56
We do also need to see protests here. We need to see people out on the streets
6:02
It cannot be a legal thing. It cannot just be going through the government
6:06
We need to take it into our own hands as well. It's absolutely horrific
6:10
It's absolutely horrific to have that size and scale of buildings looming over a beautiful village
6:17
And that goes for any of our villages in Scotland. Many people will know about Erin Brockovich and the water fight she did many, many years ago
6:25
She's now fighting about AI centres against in America. They're much further down the road than us
6:31
and they are reaping not the benefits but the absolute disadvantages of these AI centres
6:37
We've got a chance to stop them before we are trying to backtrack on bad decisions
6:43
It's just ridiculous for a small village like this to have this
6:48
and not even do an environmental feasibility study just irritates me so much
6:54
Now that we've had more detail and especially in the last couple of weeks the amount of detail that has come out
6:59
It is looking extremely overbearing and too much development for just one small area of Fife First feelings I had were absolute shock We obviously had representation about this potential
7:15
data centre but like pretty much everybody else here today I certainly had not envisaged something
7:21
of the size and scale that this is looking to be. It is shocking and it's completely unacceptable
7:27
and I am completely 100% behind the community in putting together a case to absolutely oppose this
7:33
It's just, it's not on. This is a small village in a rural area
7:37
We're going to lose farmland. We've already got Moss Morim. We've got the wind farms
7:41
What impact is it going to have on the water supply? You know, people are already living up here on the top of a hill
7:47
I know they're already talking about the impact on their water supply just because of the location to begin with
7:53
You're not going to be employing local people in these jobs. These data centres, as people have said, they're not going to be employing many people
7:59
It's going to be this huge monstrosity on the landscape. How long is it going to be there for
8:04
What's the environmental impact of it? So we've been given a statement by the Intelligent Land Investments Group
8:10
in which they address a lot of those residents' concerns. They say the absence of a formal environmental impact assessment
8:17
does not mean there has been no assessment of the project's environmental impacts
8:22
There has been a thorough one. Our planning application is very detailed in terms of noise, impact, air quality, landscape and more
8:30
A project being classed as non-EIA simply means it has not met the threshold for requiring one
8:38
We believe the local planning authority's assessment is robust. And that's what Fife Council have said to us on this as well
8:45
ILI go on to say that the majority of the wider sites will remain untouched and will in fact be enhanced
8:51
On energy use, they say that Scotland currently generates far more renewable electricity than the grid can use and it pays wind farms to switch off as a result
9:02
Rather than wasting that clean energy, the site would put it to work locally
9:06
On water, they say the site will use a fraction of what the neighbouring Moss Moran plant consumed before its closure
9:14
And on noise, they say our planning application includes detailed noise assessment
9:18
They do also say they've been in dialogue with the Oktautool Community Council for at least a year
9:24
and they would encourage residents to continue to get in touch
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