The UK is one step closer to a new nuclear power plant after the government announced a further £14.2bn in funding.
Sizewell C, near the town of Leiston on the Suffolk coast, is due to be up and running by the mid-2030s.
While the government claims the new facility represents a “golden age of clean energy” and says it will create thousands of jobs – those against it warn of the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear accident and damage to the local environment.
Here we look at what is due to be built at the Sizewell site – and why the project is so controversial.
What is Sizewell C?
The new site will house two nuclear reactors – generating up to 3.2 gigawatts of electricity, which is enough to power six million homes.
The government says it could meet 7% of the country’s total energy needs for up to 60 years.
It was initially proposed by the French energy company EDF and China’s General Nuclear Power Group, but the previous government bought the Chinese company out of its 20% stake in 2022.
Together, the UK government and EDF now own 83.5% of the site.
It is located near Sizewell beach – next to Sizewell A, a decommissioned nuclear site that opened in 1967, and Sizewell B, which is still running – and was the last nuclear site to open in the UK in 1995.
Image: The proposed new plant heads up a raft of new clean energy measures. Pic: EDF
Previous funding announcements mean the state has now invested a total of £17.8bn, with a final funding model due to be released this summer after private investors are secured to bridge the gap to the total £20bn cost.
Taxpayer money is expected to contribute £700m.
Image: Sizewell in Suffolk in the east of England
How long has it been in the making?
The project dates back to 2008, when then Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared the UK needed to boost its nuclear capacity.
There are four nuclear sites running in the UK – at Heysham, Hartlepool, Torness, and Sizewell B.
In 2010, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition earmarked Sizewell as a potential new site.
EDF began consulting with locals in the area in 2012, finally submitting its development consent order in May 2020.
Image: The Sizewell A and B power stations in Suffolk. Pic: Reuters
It was granted in July 2022 despite the Planning Inspectorate’s recommendations it should be blocked over environmental concerns.
It also fought off a judicial review at the Court of Appeal brought by protest group Together Against Sizewell C.
Construction by EDF is due to start in the next year – and is set to take between nine and 12 years.
Image: The Suffolk Coast with Sizewell B in the background. Pic: Reuters
Why are people against it?
Two campaign groups – Together Against Sizewell C and Stop Sizewell C – have spearheaded efforts to block the site.
Locally, they say construction will damage 150 hectares of land nearby, which is home to two different nature reserves and thousands of birds, animals, and plant species. The appeal also cited concerns it would compromise local water supplies and may run over budget or fail to even get off the ground like the now-scrapped HS2 trainline.
More generally, nuclear power is very controversial.
While it does not produce carbon emissions like traditional fossil fuels, any nuclear activity is exceedingly high-risk.
Nuclear fission is the process by which uranium atoms are broken down into smaller particles to produce heat, which is then boiled to create steam that powers turbines to create electricity.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says all its regulated sites are the “safest and most secure facilities in the world” and subject to strict independent safety measures.
But high-profile nuclear accidents, although incredibly rare, have leaked deadly radiation into the atmosphere, killing people and likely poisoning others for generations to come.
These include the explosion at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine in 1986 and the partial meltdown of one of the reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan following a tsunami in 2011.
Nuclear fission also produces huge amounts of radioactive waste, which has to be safely stored for hundreds of years and anti-nuclear campaigners worry about the safety of these storage sites.
Image: Together Against Sizewell C campaigners outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London in 2023. Pic: PA
What are the arguments for it?
The government wants to use nuclear energy to help meet its target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association Tom Greatrex has described Sizewell C as a “huge step forward” both for net zero – and energy security.
The Ukraine war compromised global gas and oil supplies, much of which came from Russia, sending prices rocketing.
Since then, Ukraine’s Western allies have made efforts to become more autonomous with energy production.
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Britain’s nuclear sector grew by a quarter to £20bn in the three years to 2024, with another site at Hinkley Point in Somerset currently under construction.
Some countries, like France, where EDF is based, already rely heavily on nuclear power.
Sizewell C will also create 10,000 new jobs and 1,500 apprenticeships, boosting the local and UK economy.
Around £330m has been tendered to local companies in contracts, with 70% of all those commissioned going to 3,500 British suppliers.
Mr Greatex said: “Sizewell C will provide reliable low-carbon power for more than 80 years, cutting gas use, creating thousands of high-quality skilled jobs, and long-term investment and opportunity up and down the country.”
The actor who played PC Reg Hollis in hit TV series The Bill has been praised by officers after helping them arrest a shoplifter.
Jeff Stewart stepped in when a thief attempted to escape on a bicycle in Southampton on Wednesday.
In a statement, a Hampshire Constabulary spokesman said: “The thief, 29-year-old Mohamed Diallo, fell off the bike during his attempts to flee, before officers pounced to make their arrest.
“To their surprise, local TV legend Jeff Stewart, who played PC Hollis for 24 years in The Bill, came to their aid by sitting on the suspect’s legs while officers put him in cuffs.
Image: (L-R) Jeff Stewart, Roberta Taylor, Mark Wingett, Trudie Goodwin and Cyril Nri celebrating The Bill’s 21st anniversary in 2004. Pic: PA
“In policing you should always expect the unexpected, but this really wasn’t on The Bill for this week.”
The Bill was broadcast on ITV between 1984 and 2010 and featured the fictional lives of police officers from the Sun Hill police station in east London.
Mr Stewart, who was among the original cast, appeared in more than 1,000 episodes as PC Hollis.
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Image: Police released footage showing their pursuit of a shoplifter in Southampton. Pic: Hampshire Constabulary
Image: As the suspect falls to the floor, PC Hollis (aka Jeff Stewart) sits on his legs. Pic: Hampshire Constabulary
In praising Mr Stewart’s actions, the force said: “Long since retired from Sun Hill station – but he’s still got it.”
Police from the Bargate Neighbourhoods Policing Team were alerted by staff at a Co-op store in Ocean Way to a suspected shoplifter on Wednesday.
Mohamed Diallo, 29, of Anglesea Road, Southampton, was subsequently charged with five offences of theft relating to coffee, alcohol and food from the Co-op and two other Sainsbury’s stores on three dates in April and July.
He pleaded guilty at Southampton Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and was bailed to be sentenced on August 29.
It was a cold, typically rainy Manchester evening, October 1993, when Michael Spencer Jones set out to meet a new guitar band he had been commissioned to photograph.
The weather was miserable, he didn’t know their music, wasn’t totally in the mood. “I had to drag myself from home, thinking: is it going to be worth the trouble?”
On the drive to the Out Of The Blue studio in Ancoats, on the outskirts of the city centre, a song he’d never heard before came on the local radio station. “It was like, wow, what is that?” The track was Columbia, by Oasis, the band he was on his way to meet.
Spencer Jones had previously met Noel Gallagher during the musician’s time as a roadie for fellow Manchester band Inspiral Carpets. But not Liam.
“As a photographer, obviously, the aesthetic of a band is massively important,” he says as he recalls that first shoot. “I’m just looking down the camera lens with a certain amount of disbelief.”
In front of him was a 21-year-old, months before the start of the fame rollercoaster that lay ahead. And yet. “I was looking at a face that just seemed to embody the quality of stardom.”
It was the start of a partnership that continued throughout the band’s heyday, with Spencer Jones shooting the covers for their first three albums, their most successful records, and the singles that went with them.
“You work with bands pre-fame and there’s always that question: are they going to make it? With Oasis there was never that question. Their success was inevitable.”
There was a confidence, even in those early days. “Incredible, intoxicating confidence. [They were] not interested in any kind of social norms or social constraints.”
It wasn’t arrogance, he says, of a criticism sometimes levelled at the Gallaghers. “They just had this enormous self-belief.”
Spencer Jones was one of several photographers who followed the band, capturing the moments that became part of rock history.
Jill Furmanovsky, who started working with Oasis towards the end of 1994, a few months after the release of debut album Definitely Maybe, says Noel always seemed aware their time together should be documented.
“An uncanny intuition, really, that it was important,” she says. “I think Noel has been aware right from the start, because for him that’s what he used to look at when he used to buy his Smiths records or Leo Sayer or whatever, he would stare at the covers and be fascinated by the pictures.”
Contrary to popular belief, Furmanovsky says the brothers got on fairly well most of the time, “otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to function”.
She picks one shoot in 1997, around the release of their third album, Be Here Now, as one of the more memorable ones. Noel had shared his thoughts about the band on a chalkboard and “they were having such a laugh.”
But when things did erupt, it became significant. “There were tensions in some shoots but they never started hitting each other in front of me or anything like that. I used to complain about it, actually – ‘don’t leave me out of those pictures where you’re really arguing!’.”
In Paris in 1995, tensions had boiled over. “It’s one of my favourites,” she says of the shoot. “It reflects not just the band but the family situation, these brothers in a strop with each other.”
What is notable, she says, is that they were happy for photographers to take candid shots, not just set up pictures to show them “looking cool”. Pictures that on the surface might sound mundane, showing “what they were really like – tensions, mucking about, sometimes yawning… This was the genius of Noel and [former Oasis press officer] Johnny Hopkins.”
Furmanovsky also notes the women who worked behind the scenes for Oasis – unusual at a time when the industry was even more male-dominated than it is now – and how they kept them in line.
“They got on well working with women,” she says. “Maggie Mouzakitis was their tour manager for ages and was so young, but she ruled. For a band one could say were a bunch of macho Manchester blokes, they had a lot of women working in senior positions.”
This is down to the influence of their mum, Peggy, she adds. “Absolutely crucial.”
Furmanovsky has been working with Noel on an upcoming book documenting her time with the band, and says she initially wanted to start with a picture of the Gallagher matriarch. “Noel said to me, ‘Jill, you do know she wasn’t actually in the band?'”
Touring with Oasis – ‘the journalist had to take a week off’
Kevin Cummins was commissioned to take pictures when Oasis signed to Creation Records, and it “kind of spiralled out of control a little bit”, he laughs.
“I photographed them for NME, gave them their first cover. I photographed them in Man City shirts because we were all Man City fans, and City were at the time sponsored by a Japanese electronics company, Brother. It seemed a perfect fit.”
The early days documenting the band were “fairly riotous”, he says. “They were quite young, they were obviously enjoying being in the limelight.
“I remember we went on tour with them for three days for an NME ‘on the road’ piece, and the journalist who came with me had to take a week off afterwards.
“I dipped in and out of tours occasionally – I’ve always done that with musicians because I cannot imagine spending more than about seven or eight days on tour with somebody, it would drive you nuts. They’re so hedonistic, especially in the early days. It’s very, very difficult to keep up.”
Cummins says the relationship between Noel and Liam was “like anybody’s relationship, if you’ve got a younger brother – he’d get on your nerves.”
During the shoot for the City shirt pictures, he says, “Liam kicked a ball at Noel, Noel pushed him, Liam pushed him back. They have a bit of a pushing match and then they stop and they get on with it.”
Another time, following a show in Portsmouth, “as soon as we got [to the hotel] after the gig, Liam threw all the plastic furniture in the pool. Noel looked at him and said, ‘where are we going to sit?’ And he made him get in the pool and get all the furniture out. So there were like attempts at being rock and roll, and not quite getting it right sometimes.”
Cummins says he has “very affectionate” memories of working with Oasis. “I’ve got a lot of very sensitive looking pictures of Liam and people are really surprised when they see them,” he says. “But he is a very sensitive lad… it’s just he was irritating because he was younger and he wanted to make himself heard.”
All three photographers have yet to see the reunion show, but all have tickets. All say the announcement last summer came as a surprise.
“There was an inkling of it, I suppose, just in the thawing of the comments between the brothers, but I still wouldn’t have guessed it,” says Furmanovsky, who has a book out later this year, and whose pictures feature in the programme. “It’s wonderful they have pulled it off with such conviction and passion.”
Cummins’ work can be seen in a free outdoor exhibition at Wembley Park, which fans will be able to see throughout the summer until the final gigs there in September.
“I think the atmosphere at the gigs seems to have been really friendly… I like the idea that people are taking their kids and they’re passing the baton on a little bit,” he says. “Everyone’s just having a blast and it’s like the event of the summer – definitely something we need at the moment.”
Spencer Jones, who released his second Oasis book, Definitely Maybe – A View From Within, for the album’s 30th anniversary last year – adds: “They really seem to be capturing a new generation of fans and I don’t think a band has ever done that [to this extent] before. Bands from 20, 30 years ago normally just take their traditional fanbase with them.”
But he says his first thought when the reunion was announced was for the Gallaghers’ mum, Peggy. “I think for any parent, to have two children who don’t talk is pretty tough,” he says. “It’s that notion of reconciliation – if they can do it, anyone can do it.
“The fact they’re walking on stage, hands clasped together, there’s a huge amount of symbolism there that transcends Oasis and music. Especially in a fractured society, that unity is inspiring. Everyone’s had a bit of a rough time since COVID, battle weary with life itself. I think people generally are just gagging to have some fun.”
Brothers: Liam And Noel Through The Lens Of Kevin Cummins is on at Wembley Park until 30 September. Definitely Maybe – A View From Within, by Michael Spencer Jones, available through Spellbound Galleries, is out now. Oasis: Trying To Find A Way Out Of Nowhere, by Jill Furmanovsky and edited by Noel Gallagher, published by Thames & Hudson, is out from 23 September.
It was “shadowy” of the government to reveal Angela Rayner warned about the threat to social cohesion in a “readout”, Harriet Harman has said.
On Wednesday, Downing Street released a “cabinet readout” saying the deputy prime minister told ministers the government “had to show it had a plan to address people’s concerns” to defuse community tensions.
She said immigration was having a “profound impact on society” and noted 17 out of 18 places where protests broke out last summer after kicking off in Southport were the most deprived areas in Britain.
This was widely interpreted as a warning that riots could happen this summer.
But Baroness Harman told Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast that announcing it in a “readout” – given to journalists after a cabinet meeting – was not the way to do things.
“These are quite huge issues – the potential for disorder, social integration, the public mood, and ahead of summer,” the Labour peer said.
“I don’t know whether I’m just a bit old-fashioned about this, but I think it’s better when government are making statements like that they give people an opportunity to ask questions rather than this kind of sort of rather shadowy way of doing it.”
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Essex Police chief denies Farage claims
The former minister added that cabinet meetings are supposed to be secret so that everybody around the table can speak and say “anything they want because there is this protected thing”.
“You don’t say what’s happening at cabinet,” she added.
“And if anybody asks in the House of Commons or anywhere else, what happened in cabinet, the automatic response is ‘we don’t talk about what’s happened in cabinet, it’s private’. And they’ve sort of slightly breached that now.
“So is it now a situation where anybody can be asked, what did somebody say in cabinet?
“Or is it only that the prime minister can say what happened in cabinet?
“It’s a bit puzzling.”
Baroness Harman’s comments came after protests in Epping last week outside a hotel housing asylum seekers turned violent.
More than 1,000 people gathered outside The Bell Hotel in protests over two nights after an asylum seeker was arrested and charged on suspicion of alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in the town.
Counter-protesters joined, and this week Reform UK leader Nigel Farage accused Essex Police of bussing them in, which the force said was “categorically wrong”.