Sizewell C is doing infrastructure differently on the Suffolk coast
Julia Pyke, Joint Managing Director
| Sizewell C
As it prepares to build a new post-16 college in its host town in Suffolk, Sizewell C is aiming to set new standards for delivering big energy projects in Britain. Julia Pyke, Joint Managing Director of Sizewell C, explains how the new 3.2GW nuclear power project on the Suffolk coast is doing infrastructure differently
We need to think differently about how we deliver energy projects in Britain.
We know why we need to build them. Projects like Sizewell C – set to provide clean energy to six million British homes – are essential to meeting our rapidly growing energy demands while cutting carbon emissions. At the same time, a secure, homegrown energy supply is vital in today’s increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape.
But the more difficult question is how do we build energy projects? How do we make sure these projects deliver growth in this country? How do we make sure they give more than they take from the communities in which they’re built? And how do we ensure they leave us with a better Britain?
Long before we started building Sizewell C, we made a commitment that this would be a British project, creating British jobs and supporting British businesses. The project will create 10,000 jobs, support thousands more across the UK, and deliver 1,500 apprenticeships. Over its lifetime, we will ensure that 90 per cent of the project’s value will go to UK businesses.
We also pledged to deliver thousands of opportunities for people here in Suffolk – that at least a third of the 7,900 people working on site during peak construction and 540 of our apprentices will come from this region.
Long term, the project will employ 900 people in high-quality jobs – not to mention the hundreds of engineers who’ll be employed on Sizewell C, and Sizewell B, for maintenance and refuelling during 18-month outage cycles.
Working with local partners, we’ve tried to think creatively about how we can deliver the project’s needs, as well as those of our community. Our recent announcement to build a new post-16 college in the area, in partnership with Suffolk New College, is a great example.
Building a new college – alongside a new centre of excellence for skills development and an apprenticeship and trainee hub – will mean we can more easily create and access a highly-skilled, homegrown workforce right here in our host community. It also helps raise up a town that has for too long lacked educational and training opportunities for its young people.
Young people in Leiston do not have any existing education options post-16 in the town. This means that if they wish to continue their education, they must travel to other towns or cities across the region. And yet, this is also an area where transport links are limited: if a young person from Leiston wanted to go to college in Ipswich, they would be faced with a commute of over an hour and a half. No wonder there is a 50 per cent dropout rate for kids in the area post-16.
"Long before we started building Sizewell C, we made a commitment that this would be a British project, creating British jobs and supporting British businesses"
And it’s not just our host town of Leiston that need the opportunities a project like ours offers. A few months ago, we commissioned independent polling that revealed a widespread level of dissatisfaction with the level of opportunities in this region. Across the East of England, Norfolk (27 per cent) and Suffolk (30 per cent) have the lowest levels of satisfaction with the availability of well-paying jobs. That same poll revealed that 70 per cent of people in the East believe a new nuclear power station in Suffolk will bring job opportunities while it is being constructed – rising to 76 per cent in Suffolk.
But we can’t just rely on people to come to us to discover the thousands of opportunities we offer. We have to bring those opportunities to them. And we need to understand the barriers that might prevent people taking up those opportunities – whether they’re leaving school at 16 or looking to change career at 40. That’s exactly why we’re building a new college for our host town in Leiston. And it’s why we’re engaged with schools in this area – to support STEM, to help raise aspirations, and to demonstrate why nuclear is such a great industry to join. We think this sets an example of how we can think differently to meet the needs of our infrastructure projects, our country, and our communities.
To find out more about Sizewell C, visit sizewellc.com
