This letter, written from 14 community campaigns against hyperscale data centres, with APRS, calls on the First Minister to put in place an immediate moratorium and announced their intention to rally at the Parliament on 3rd September.

First Minister John Swinney

St Andrew’s House, Regent Road, Edinburgh, EH1 3DG 

24 August 2026

Dear First Minister

Re: Community Concerns over Hyperscale AI Data Centres

We are writing to you as representatives of fourteen communities affected by proposals for hyperscale data centres in Scotland. Our groups, along with APRS, have been campaigning for a moratorium on hyperscale data centres in Scotland as well as campaigning locally against the proposals which will have a huge impact on our own communities.

The issues with these developments are not just local, they impact our electricity grid, our climate targets, our agricultural land and our water. Our concerns are listed below:

• The sheer size of the developments, taking up tens of hectares, and that they are, in most cases, on greenfield, Green Belt and agricultural land.
• The energy use of the installations and the implications for Scotland’s climate commitments. 
• We are also worried about how our energy transmission networks will cope with the massively increased demand – we are already aware that some of our communities are limited in the EV chargers they can install due to a lack of energy – so how will the grid infrastructure cope with these huge electricity demands
• Data Centres worldwide have been increasing energy prices due to the increased grid infrastructure that has to be built, their need for a continuous 24/7 baseload supply of electricity that can’t be delivered via renewable energy alone and that this means that generation has to rely on gas-fired power stations most often, which is the most expensive form of energy. 
• The water implications – we are being told developers use closed loop systems, but this causes a trade off with energy and means even more energy will be used. We know that in other parts of the world data centres have enormous impacts on local water systems and we have concerns about what will happen to local supplies.
• That they will not bring the jobs promised – we cannot see how the developers will be able to create the jobs promised when hyperscale data centres are a type of infrastructure that employs extremely low numbers of people.
• Noise is a major issue with hyperscale data centers and most of the data centres planned are extremely close to people’s homes.
• Pollution from the diesel generators is a worry for us. Diesel back-up generators will not only be running when there is a powercut, they will also have to be tested under routine conditions which could be detrimental to local people’s health living close to the sites. We also know that, in the US, strain on the grid means that data centres are switching to back-up generation on a more regular basis.
• Safety of communities is a major concern for us and our communities. We are aware that large quantities of diesel fuel will need to be stored onsite, that there are risks with respect to fire in Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS), especially when located close to a data centre, with the  potential for run-away thermal events. 

You said, in your First Minister’s Questions of 25th July, that you are “giving active consideration to whether the Scottish Government should be providing planning guidance to balance the rapid proliferation of hyperscale data centres with national energy and climate goals that are vital to our future prosperity” but this goes nowhere near far enough. We acknowledge the positive actions of the Minister for Public Finances to ensure that two of the six remaining data centre proposals that have been screened out of EIA will now be required to do them, but we want to see all hyperscale data centres being required to have an EIA. We hope to see further announcements from the Scottish Government following these positive steps. 

We will be gathering outside the Scottish Parliament ahead of General Questions and First Minister’s Questions on Thursday 3rd September, and we would like to ask that you meet us and discuss our concerns. 

We would like to see movement from the Government on the following elements:

• Immediately bring forward a moratorium on hyperscale datacentre applications to allow time to ensure that the following are in place:
  • All hyperscale data centres should be required to an Environmental Impact Assessment and that EIA should include the impacts of the power consumption and the water consumption of the data centre
  • An independent assessment of the need for hyperscale AI data centres in Scotland and the impacts on communities, land, water, the power grid and climate commitments should be undertaken. This should inform guidance provided to local authorities.  
  • A full investigation of risk, health and safety of hyperscale AI datacentres, to incorporate effects of backup generators, diesel storage, fire risk, implications of black-outs, prioritising of hyperscale data centres over other users’ electricity supplies, heat island effect, health implications of pollution and noise and animal welfare implications.
  • All hyperscale data centres should be required to submit Full Planning and not Planning Permission in Principle (PPP). We have seen unacceptably vague applications from ILI at Auchtertool and from Shelbourne Drummond at Gyle, Edinburgh, because they have put in for PPP. It also allows speculators to get the permission and sell off to another company who may develop something completely different. There need to be protections in place to ensure this cannot happen.
  • Hyperscale AI datacentres should be required to provide substantial multi-million pound bonds that will ensure reinstatement of the site when they close.
  • Scottish Government must meet its legal commitments to meet net-zero and this must be the primary consideration in all policy.

We are not against technology and the benefits that it brings, in fact the UK supercomputer being built on University of Edinburgh land, and the Edinburgh University supercomputer are examples of where publicly funded data centres are bringing huge benefits in the case of ground-breaking research, including in the medical field, as well as supporting huge numbers of jobs, and studentships, in research and development. 

But this is not what these hyperscale AI data centres are. They are 10-15 times bigger than these huge supercomputers and will be run by the US tech giants who need them for training and running AI models. The impact of these Large Language Models on safety online, creating deep fake videos, replacing jobs and being used by illegal elements to hack is of a huge concern to us. We need the Government to start distinguishing between different types of data centres and identify whether they will bring benefits to Scotland. 

We also need to be clear that, although we are asking the Government to act, we are not asking that decisions on planning should be made by the Scottish Government. Decision making for planning should remain at the local level, where local democracy and local communities voices can be heard. No matter how challenging it is to navigate planning processes (and we are finding it hugely challenging and biased in favour of the developers) we believe that planning decisions are best made by local planning authorities, with the appropriate guidance. 

We hope to see you outside Holyrood on 3 September, but if this is not possible please can we arrange for representatives from our groups to meet you at another time. 

Yours sincerely, 

Say No To Larbert Data Centre, 

The Inches and Kinnaird Village Residents Association, 

Larbert Residents Association.

No Gyle Data Centre Campaign

Auchtertool Action Group 

West Edinburgh Against AI Data Centre

Dunbar Against Massive Datacentres Reject Hunterston Data Centre

Reject Hunterston Data Centre

Ayrshire Major Development Community Group (Hurlford)

NO data centres in East Dunbartonshire

Woodhall, Faskine and Palacecraig Conservation Group

Say NO to the Chapelcross AI Data Centre

Ravenscraig Locals against Mega Data Centres 

Save the Lammermuirs

Say NO to Cockenzie Data Centre

AI Data Centres Awareness Group – Blackdog, Balmedie and surrounding area

Action to Protect Rural Scotland

Wider Support

Our campaigns are extremely well supported and, in the Annex below, you can see the petitions we have and the numbers of signatures that they have.

In a separate document, APRS attach their petition on hyperscale data centres which has been running for some months and has over 8,000 signatures.

This has now closed, since Scottish Parliament Petition PE2233: ‘Moratorium on planning applications for all hyperscale data centres until their environmental impacts have been fully assessed’ went live. The Scottish Parliament Petition lodged by APRS currently has nearly 20,000 signatures.

ANNEX Local Petitions 

Planning Objections:

In addition there have been 7,020 objections to the planning application at Larbert uploaded on their planning portal and 1600 uploaded to the Fife Portal against the Auchtertool 600MW data centre (we believe they are still in the process of uploading them)