WATCH: Why Britain’s Newest Nuclear Power Station Might Be Delayed… AGAIN

Jun 08, 2026

"A few weeks ago, I wrote about the risk that Hinkley Point C would be delayed due to Natural England deeming HPC's £700m spent on fish protection insufficient. My colleagues at Britain Remade decided to visit the plant, talk to the team at EDF, and meet with one of the families at risk of compulsory purchase if EDF are forced to create a salt marsh near the plant. They made a short documentary about it. I encourage you to watch it."

- Sam Dumitriu

I recently visited Hinkley Point C, the nuclear power plant under construction in Somerset.

When finished, it will provide up to 7% of Britain’s electricity, but the project has seen huge overspends and delays.

And now there’s a new threat to Hinkley Point C being switched on at its scheduled date in 2030.

Our new video is a story about power, and why you don’t have enough of it.

It’s also a story about fish, the environmental regulator Natural England, £700m of bill payers’ money and flooding farmers’ land against their will.

If you don’t have time to watch the video, here are the key points.

Politicians have handed so much power to arm’s length bodies like Natural England over the years that they have become veto players in infrastructure decisions.

In the case of Hinkley Point C, Natural England can prevent the plant being switched on by recommending to the Marine Management Organisation - yet another arm’s length body - that the nuclear power station is denied the water discharge licence it needs to start generating energy.

Natural England’s role in this case is to advocate for the fish that may be drawn into the station’s cooling pipes along with seawater. Seven hundred million pounds of bill payers’ money has already been spent mitigating the risk to fish.

But now Natural England say that the £700m is not enough. That means revisiting the plan that the acoustic fish deterrent was supposed to take off the table: creating hundreds of acres of salt marsh at locations along the Bristol Channel.

Locations like Dowlais Farm campsite in Clevedon, where I spoke to the owner Kathrin Kirk. If the salt marsh plan goes ahead, the land her business sits on will be flooded and her livelihood will cease to exist.

The inevitable legal wrangling around legal battle Kathrin and her neighbours will put up against this plan, and the time it takes to establish a salt marsh if it does go ahead, would almost certainly delay Hinkley Point C’s current switch on date of 2030.

Natural England says it’s just following the law as it currently exists. There’s some truth in that. But again we come back to power. It’s Parliament that has the power to change these laws.

The MPs that got us into this mess by handing too much power away, can get us out of it by setting new rules for building nuclear energy. Rules that do away with the endless bespoke surveys, legal tussles and design changes that has made Hinkley Point C the most expensive nuclear power station ever built.

If they get this right in the upcoming Nuclear Regulation Bill, that could mean more power for the grid and more power to do what’s needed to get Britain back on its feet.