Sam Heughan joins battle against Chapelcross data centre

Outlander star Sam Heughan has joined the campaign against plans to build a giant data centre at a former nuclear site in the south of Scotland.

The actor - who grew up in Galloway - questioned how much financial benefit projects like the one at Chapelcross, near Annan, would deliver to Scotland.

He said the actual number of jobs delivered after the construction phase had been completed would be "very few".

CX Tech Ltd, which is behind the plans, said it could deliver more than 500 full-time posts and represented a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" for the region.

In an interview on Storm & Alexis on 5, Heughan said he had only recently found out about the data centre planned in Dumfries and Galloway - one of a large number planned across Scotland.

"There's a lot to find out here and many causes for concern, I think," he said.

"The only people who are building these large-scale, hyper scale data centres are US tech giants.

"The financing will go back to them, the benefits will go back to them."

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He added that he also had concerns about the impact on the landscape.

"They're being built on, not just on brown land, but also agricultural land, protected grassland," he said.

"There's an impact to the environment, there's impact to the animals that live near there.

"There needs to be just more legislation and more consideration

"We shouldn't blindly go into this and keep investing in it. I think a pause or moratorium is the right way to start this."

He said that after working on Outlander for 12 years he had seen a "huge rise" in tourism and much greater awareness of Scotland's "amazing landscape" and "incredible buildings".

"There's so much that Scotland has to offer, not only in terms of tourism but also our exports," he added.

"So should we even be investing in these large industrial sites that are essentially going to become wasteland?".

The plans for Chapelcross were lodged last month and have already attracted considerable opposition.

Dumfries and Galloway Council confirmed that due to the "significant volume" of representations it has received it will not publish them online in the usual way in order to reduce pressure on its planning service.

Instead, the number of representations for and against the plans will be published along with a summary of the grounds for commenting.

Graeme Anderson, chief executive of CX Tech, said Chapelcross had the potential to bring together renewable energy, digital infrastructure and high-value jobs.

He said it could create a "new economic future" for a site which had played an important role in Scotland's energy story for generations.

CX Tech hopes work could start on the project next year with it taking about eight years to complete.

It said the project was in line with attempts to redevelop the site and could support up to 750 jobs during construction and about 540 once it was operational.

The Scottish government has rejected a call from the Scottish Greens for the application processes for data centres to be paused until new national guidelines are in force.

However, ministers said they would publish the guidance by Christmas - and that they did not expect any planning decisions to be made before then.

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