In 2022 Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced that a new twin-reactor nuclear power station, Sizewell C, will be built on the Suffolk coast on a new site situated next to Sizewell A and B.

Throughout the planning phase, we worked hard with colleagues at RSPB and Friends of the Earth to bring together evidence and push for suitable mitigation and compensation. Whilst we still believe the location is unsuitable and the risk remains high, we did make considerable progress in influencing and improving the plans developed by EDF to lessen the impact and risk on wildlife.

This is a special place for wildlife, being a diverse mix of habitats including sand dunes, wetlands, wet woodland and heathland. Wonderful wetland habitats home to otters, kingfishers and water voles lie in the valleys between ridges of light, sandy heath. Sizewell Estate sits right next to the RSPB’s internationally-important reserve, Minsmere.

We continue to work hard to ensure the agreed mitigation, compensation and monitoring is carried out effectively, and to limit the impact to the wetland habitats and rare species.

Such is the vast scale of the project, we have to be very focussed where we put our effort to ensure the very best wildlife outcomes.

In terms of habitat, we will be sitting on groups that oversee the protection of the Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). This is an incredibly important and nationally rare fen habitat which we are determined to help protect from harm from the development. Specifically, we are most concerned that water quality will be impacted in the long run, and we will hold EDF to account if this is the case.

We are also focussing our efforts on protecting nationally rare species such as natterjack toad, barbastelle bat, and adder. All have important local populations that we are concerned about and, for many years, we have fought for them to be protected through adequate mitigation and compensation.

We are now working to ensure that EDF do what they promised during the examination. This includes ponds and wildlife corridors for the natterjack toad, bat boxes, bat houses, and quiet, ‘dark corridors’ for the barbastelle bat to fly and feed along and a large area of newly created wild habitat for adder.