Firms working on the £18bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant have admitted their finances have taken a hit due to the project’s delays. Consultant Rider Levett Bucknall (RLB) had a contract on Hinkley Point C as a subconsultant and its chairman Ann Bentley has told Building the contract was cancelled when EDF paused work on the site as a final investment decision had still not been made. She added that the contract termination put a dent in RLB’s profit. Bentley said: “People we had allocated for years, instead of going to Hinkley they literally turned up in our office. They just sat there for two months until we were able to reallocate them. “Five people for two months, that’s ten months, almost a year’s salary that came straight off our profits.” A director at a contractor working on the project said their company will only move workers back to Hinkley when a final investment decision is made. He said: “We still feel pretty confident it will go ahead, but no matter how much EDF shout at us to mobilise, we are not going to actually do it until we see that money in our bank account.”
Building 10th Feb 2016 read more »
The builder of the £18 billion Hinkley Point C nuclear power station is to tell its main contractor Areva to look at subcontracting major works for the plant to specialist British steelworks such as Sheffield Forgemasters, The Times has learnt. It is understood that EDF, the French state-owned energy company that is building Hinkley Point in return for government-backed susbsidised fuel prices, is revisiting its supply chain decisions after a row at Westminster in which the industry minister claimed British companies were incapable of taking on the work.
Times 12th Feb 2016 read more »