Cherwell District Council will decide next month whether to grant permission for a controversial £900 million data centre development funded by Exeter College.
The development, named EXOq, is located next to Oxford Parkway station in Kidlington and aims to be a “home for global research innovation and education”, with a particular focus on AI and quantum computing. The plans include a large data centre to provide computing infrastructure, alongside an innovation hub aiming to bring together researchers, government institutes, and investors.
The plans also include a conference centre, 180-room hotel, and a further education college that focuses on “equipping the young people today with the skills to be the workforce of tomorrow, working in and supporting newly emerging technologies linked to EXOq”. Construction would begin in 2028 with an expected completion in 2040.
Exeter College finance and estates bursar, Nicholas Badman, told Cherwell: “EXOq is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Oxford and the region. Exeter College is uniquely placed to deliver the sovereign High-Performance Compute infrastructure the country, and the Oxford ecosystem, needs to compete in quantum computing and AI.”
The University of Oxford’s Vice Chancellor, Irene Tracey, said that “fundamentally, EXOq fits very well with the university’s needs and it has my full backing”.
Exeter’s plans come alongside a government drive to grow the UK’s compute infrastructure. The government’s 2025 UK Compute Roadmap forecasts that the UK will need three times as much data centre capacity by 2030 to keep pace with AI developments.
The plans also tie in with the government’s ambitions for the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor, which it has dubbed “Europe’s Silicon Valley”. An economic impact assessment produced in support of the application suggests that the gross value added could reach £1.4 billion and create 7,000 jobs total, of which at least 4,600 would be in the local area.
Local residents have criticised the planned development. Kidlington Councillor and Leader of the Green Party on Cherwell District Council, Ian Middleton, has publicly objected to the proposal, while more than 35 local residents submitted statements opposing the plans during public consultation. One resident urged the council to “be courageous and stop letting the colleges dominate the whole area” while another labelled the development “huge, unwanted, and unnecessary”.
Local campaign groups, such as the Oxfordshire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, have raised environmental concerns including the development’s impact on the green belt separating Oxford from Kidlington and a nearby ancient woodland. One objecting group, Wolvercote Neighbourhood Forum, explicitly references noise problems caused by data centres in the US in a letter opposing the site.
In response to queries about the project’s environmental impact, Badman told Cherwell: “The College understands local concerns and is committed to making EXOq an exemplar of sustainable data centre design.” Badman noted that the plans include on-site solar power and would reuse waste heat from the data centre through a low-carbon heat network serving both EXOq and the surrounding area. He added that the College is exploring off-site renewable energy and working with electricity generators and is “committed to ensuring EXOq’s demands will not conflict with local energy needs”.
The most significant local challenge to the project surrounds the provision of golf courses. In 2025, the 118-year-old North Oxford Golf Course, owned by Merton College, Exeter College, and the University of Oxford, closed to make way for a housing project. Greenway, a group set up by former members of the club, told Cherwell that “the college gave assurances that Frieze Farm [the land upon which EXOq would be built] could be used if necessary as a replacement for the golf course”. Such a use is suggested in the Cherwell District Council Local Plan 2031.
Regarding the potential golf course, EXOq states that “evidence submitted to the Local Plan highlighted that the popularity of golf is declining nationally, and there is insufficient demand locally to justify the EXOq site as a replacement course”. In a statement to Cherwell, Greenway have labelled these statements inaccurate.
A decision is expected at the start of next month after the council’s independent golf need report is complete. The report will be the third golf need survey attached to the application, after Exeter and Greenway submitted their own competing surveys.
