BBC NewsBorrowing was £17.4bn last month, the second highest October figure since monthly records began in 1993.
Finito World
On the Suffolk coast, where the North Sea leans against the land with its usual ambivalence — sometimes glassy, sometimes hostile — a new chapter in Britain’s long and often anguished story of energy is beginning. It is called Sizewell C, and this week the government has committed £14.2 billion of public money to its creation.
It is, by any measure, a monumental commitment. Not only in financial terms — though that alone would mark it as a political act of rare scale — but in moral and temporal ones too. For this is a project whose fruits will not be tasted for at least a decade, perhaps longer. The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has described it as a “landmark decision” that will “kickstart” economic growth. Her Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, has gone further, calling it the “only way” to regain control of Britain’s energy future.
And yet, even as they spoke, dissent gathered like sea mist around the announcement. Alison Downes of the campaign group Stop Sizewell C stood on the very coastline where work will begin, her voice calm but unyielding: “This is HS2 all over again,” she warned, invoking the spectre of Britain’s most over‑promised infrastructure saga .
We find ourselves, then, in the classic territory of British progress — somewhere between ambition and attrition, vision and regret.
Jobs, Skills, Local Soil
If Sizewell C is a vision cast into the future, it is also an opportunity rooted deeply in the present. Official projections speak of around 10,000 direct jobs during construction, with 3,260 MWe of clean power to come online by mid‑2030s. At peak, some forecasts show 7,900 on-site roles, a third of which will be sourced from East Anglia — roughly 2,600 local positions.
Yet this data brings complexity. EDF have previously celebrated 25,000 job opportunities, though this includes each year’s contracts stacked together — meaning a shorter project would shrink cumulative numbers significantly east. Still, one poll found 85% of local suppliers expect growth directly from the site, with 65% anticipating new roles within a year of investment.
There’s more: 35 apprenticeship placements have launched already — soon to grow to nearly 100 early-career roles — spanning engineering, cybersecurity, environmental management and more. Plans promise 1,500 apprentice positions overall, with at least 540 for Suffolk residents.
These figures speak of more than construction. They speak of a skills revolution: apprentices, apprenticeships, career pipelines — some for high-tech roles (cyber, engineering), others for long-term operations once the turbines spin.
The People Behind the Project
It is not only statistics that matter — this is a human story too.
Julia Pyke, Joint Managing Director of Sizewell C, offers a vivid portrait of both challenge and conviction. “It’s a tough gig, developing big infrastructure projects in the UK,” she tells the Financial Times, recalling the deep skepticism left by prior delays at Hinkley Point. But she also notes a fundamental shift: “There is this constant … need to watch for things going horribly wrong in some sort of unexpected way.” And yet: “It isn’t a terrible failure.” She emphasises Sizewell C’s capacity to revive UK welding, engineering, lifelong apprenticeships, and to hire ex‑armed forces and ex‑offenders to build “a very good first place to work”.
Local voices echo both hope and caution. One Citizens Advice spokesperson urged that this does not become a burden on household bills, as even a small surcharge sustained over decades can bite into budgets theguardian.com. Meanwhile, Labour MP Jack Abbott — among 50 backbench MPs urging a nuclear‑first growth strategy — called the plant a “once‑in‑a‑generation opportunity” to structure the East’s economy around stable, high‑skilled roles.
The Weight of Time and Cost
But Sizewell C is not merely a technical solution. It is an act of national storytelling. It says: we still build. We still believe in the long game. We still trust that some things are worth beginning, even if others will finish them.
That, of course, is easier said than done. The plant will cost billions and take decades. Its twin, Hinkley Point C, is still incomplete and eye‑wateringly over budget. Critics warn of spiralling costs, ecological impact, and the burden passed on to consumers. They are not wrong to worry. Indeed, in a post‑austerity Britain where every hospital roof leaks and every local council begs for solvency, £14.2 billion is not a figure easily defended .
Political Burdens and Moral Imagination
And yet: what is the alternative? To tinker endlessly at the edges of our energy grid, hoping that wind and solar alone will fill the gap? To continue importing energy from abroad while pretending we are taking back control? To burn more gas, more oil, more coal — and tell ourselves the climate crisis is someone else’s fault?
No, Sizewell C is not perfect. But perfection is a poor standard for reality. It is, instead, a declaration: that decarbonisation is not just a slogan, but a series of engineering tasks that demand courage, compromise, and capital.
What’s more, it is also — and this may be its deeper message — a rebuttal of cynicism. In a country where great projects often dissolve into white elephants and budget scandals, Sizewell C dares to propose that something large, long‑term, and unapologetically strategic might yet be possible.
And yet even for this government — one basking, for now, in the glow of electoral momentum — the Sizewell C decision may prove economically and politically treacherous. Every government department wants its share of the Spending Review pie. Defence, healthcare, education, transport — all line up with justified need. Government debt stands tall and unyielding. Interest payments alone choke ambition. And in such a context, to pour billions into a single site on the Suffolk coast is a provocation — one that may, over time, prove inspired or ruinous.
Perhaps this is the paradox of power: that the most meaningful decisions are the least immediately rewarding. Sizewell C is not a ribbon‑cutting photo op. It is a bet on the future — that there will be one, and that it will need light, and that we will have the wisdom to provide it.
The protestors will return. The spreadsheets will strain. The tide will move in and out. And all the while, on that small stretch of English coastline, we will build.
