It could be something out of Richard Osman’s bestselling Thursday Murder Club mystery novels and Netflix film – as pensioners take on the ‘deep state’.
Yet this band of intrepid investigators in Wiltshire are on a mission not to solve any killings, but instead fend off an 18m-high shed.
Tensions have flared over expansion plans at one of Britain’s national data centres – which could be foiled not by flooding risks nor eco-system damage but because a group of rural campaigners are determined to stop developers in their tracks.
Morgyn Davies, 69, is leading the campaign – while his wife Trudy’s home baking skills are among the weapons being used to persuade residents to oppose development by MoD Corsham in Wiltshire.
The fight is on to stop another data centre being built in a field in the nearby village of Westwells.
The Government says building an 18m-tall storage shed just outside the site’s military cyber headquarters is in the interests of national security.
But Mr Davies says it will increase village flooding risks, mask countryside tranquillity with noisy cooling fans and destroy a ‘dark corridor’ for several protected bat species.
Such is the professional experience of Neston and Westwells Action Group’s members, the retirees are being compared to characters in Osman‘s Thursday Murder Club series – recently adapted as a Netflix movie starring Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie and Pierce Brosnan.
A group of pensioners in Wiltshire are campaigning against expansion plans near an MoD site – and have welcomed comparisons to Richard Osman’s fictional Thursday Murder Club
Mr Davies, a decorated Ministry of Defence salvage officer, is joined by an Army engineer, accountant, recruitment expert and a district nurse.
He says the planning application by private technology firm ARK is complicated by a disused mine underneath the field where the building is earmarked to sit – one which connects to the MoD’s Cold War bunker.
He added: ‘By levelling the surface of the proposed site and covering it in concrete and buildings, there will be nowhere left for surface water to go.
‘ARK is using the secrecy that often surrounds the security of MoD sites to be economical with the truth about the planning application.
‘At the beginning, they denied there would be flood risk because the Environment Agency had apparently said this. But then when you go to the Environment Agency and they say, “We never said that”, it makes you wonder what else they are trying to sneak through.
‘We are horrified, having done our own investigations, at the gaps in the knowledge and the bias towards the developer in this planning process beneath an aura of secrecy about the site which is 90 per cent smoke and mirrors.
‘Particularly worrying is that this latest data centre application is outside the MoD perimeter and could set a precedent for further development in the village.
‘If this data centre goes ahead, they can build another and another and another and because ARK is a private company already looking to sell its portfolio, they could sell to anyone; the Chinese, the Russians, anyone – so it’s not hard to see the long term national security implications.
Morgyn Davies, 69, is leading the campaign – while his wife Trudy’s home baking skills are among the weapons being used to rally support near MoD Corsham in Wiltshire
‘A sleepy little village where people have retired to expecting a quiet rural life, could easily become a sprawling top security town.’
And he welcomed any comparisons to Osman’s fictional characters, saying: ‘We most definitely are Thursday Murder Club detectives and happy to be viewed as a group of silly old pensioners with too much time on their hands.
‘But our campaign has already halted the scheme by about a year so we’re not going down without a fight.’
Disused MoD land on the outskirts of nearby town Corsham is also the headquarters of Crown Hosting Data Centres, a joint venture between the Cabinet Office and US-owned ARK which has six huge data centres on the site.
The plans submitted by the company for the seventh building is the first outside former military land on an 18-acre site known locally as ‘Donkey Field’ in the heart of Westwells – close to a retirement apartment complex which is home to 250 residents.
Since the campaign started, there have been more than 1,000 objections to the application, with ARK since resubmitting plans and adding new assurances about the flood risk and local bat species protection.
The facility is already known for its underground tunnels, codenamed Burlington, designed to host the entire British government if a Russian nuclear strike hit London.
Today it serves as the military’s cyber headquarters, where staff are vetted and the centres cleared to host classified data up to the level of ‘top secret’.
The fight is on to stop another data centre being built in a field in the village of Westwells
Retired district nurse Trudy, 70, NWAG’s self-styled ‘people person’ and Mr Davies’s wife, has been persuading local residents to oppose the development – and insists her home baking talents are playing a part.
She said: ‘My scones are probably my forte at campaign meetings and just knocking on doors in the local village and explaining the risks of the scheme has been rewarding because most people had no idea what was happening.’
She claims contractors linked to ARK have ‘sacrificed’ the land to convince the planning authorities it is a brownfield site.
She added: ‘Just a few weeks ago, there were beautiful flowers – now they’ve cut back the site to make it look like land that needs developing.’
The professional expertise of Mr Davies, a marine and flooding expert, former Army Colonel and Corsham Town councillor Victor Steadman and retired accountant Peter Clarke are said to have boosted the campaign efforts.
Another group member, recruitment consultant Natalie Williams, has researched local archives to find underground maps and its substandard drainage facilities.
Her findings show the maze of mine shafts and military facilities is far more extensive than many locals realise.
Mr Steadman, 69, said only about half the retirement complex residents knew about the development plans as letters that went to them described the plans as an extension.
Stars of the recent Netflix adaptation of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series include (left to right) Dame Helen Mirren, Sir Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan and Celia Imrie
Richard Osman, former co-presenter of BBC show Pointless, has become a bestselling novelist
He added: ‘The implication was that this was simply like someone having a conservatory put up which made me call a public meeting to get our own Thursday Murder Club formed.
‘To find a huge industrial building was being planned right on our doorstep was shocking.
‘We also realised how many people are going to hear the large industrial roof fans that are already blighting people’s lives from the previously built data centres.’
Mr Clarke, 64, said ‘The tonal noise from the cooling fans on the existing data centre pointing towards my house drive me and everyone else mad – it’s pretty constant from 3am or 4am, especially in the summer.’
While no one from ARK responded to a Daily Mail requests for comment, a company spokesman has previously said sustainability was at the heart of the project.
They added: ‘We are committed to preserving habitats for native wildlife, ensuring biodiversity thrives alongside our buildings through conservation initiatives that include bat corridors and caves as well as beehives, badger setts.’
