Sizewell C represents a terrible deal for the UK taxpayer, the Commons Public Accounts Committee says in a report published on Wednesday 28 October. The committee's chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, said the high level of risk borne by taxpayers and consumers for the construction of the Suffolk nuclear plant was extraordinary, and that private investors look set for significant returns while customers are likely to be saddled with higher energy bills. The plant is a 3.2GW station on the Suffolk coast, with a headline cost of £38 billion and a government cost range of £40.5 billion to £47.7 billion, targeted for completion between 2039 and 2043.

Consumers carry the cost-rise risk

The financing, approved in July 2025, gives the government a 44.9% stake alongside EDF, Centrica, La Caisse and Amber Infrastructure, under the Regulated Asset Base model, in which customers pay during construction and share the risk of cost rises. The committee's central arithmetic is stark: if the cost rises from £40.5 billion to £47.7 billion, private investors contribute only £30 million more in cash, while consumers pay an extra £9.8 billion during construction and a further £12 billion over the plant's 60-year operating life, in real terms. The £22 billion figure in some summaries is approximately the sum of those two consumer figures, not a separate charge, and £47.7 billion is the top of the range, not a final cost.

What Parliament is demanding next

The committee demands six-monthly reports to Parliament on actual and forecast costs, timetable, milestones, bill impact and investor returns, plus immediate notification if forecasts become unreliable. It notes that no comparable nuclear plant anywhere has been built on time and on budget, and that same-reactor-design projects have run up to 14 years late. No government or Sizewell C Ltd response to the report was in the sources checked for this article, so this report records the committee's case, not a settled verdict on the project.

Sources: Construction News (PAC report) and New Civil Engineer.