Sizewell C and Northern Powerhouse rail face official probes

Probes into Sizewell C and Northern Powerhouse Rail have been lined up by a powerful parliamentary committee.

The public accounts committee said the sessions would draw on National Audit Office (NAO) work and would examine how departments were managing the cost, delivery and value-for-money risks attached to major projects. The programme was agreed by members in discussions led by committee chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown.

On Northern Powerhouse Rail, the committee said it would question senior Department for Transport officials on the programme’s progress since 2014 and the challenges facing delivery. The scheme is intended to improve rail links between cities including Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield, and is due to be delivered in three phases.

The first phase includes new rail lines and upgrades to existing routes in the North East of England and is expected to complete in the 2030s. According to the NAO, the Department for Transport will have spent £410m on the programme by March 2026, with a funding cap of £45bn from 2026/27 onward.

The NAO also warned that more work was needed to align the programme with wider growth plans, which would require effective cross-government working at national and local level. The committee said it had already raised concerns on other transport schemes, including the cancelled northern leg of High Speed 2 and Crossrail, over rising costs and weak lessons learned.

The PAC will also investigate Sizewell C, the planned 3.2GW nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast.

The project is being funded by government, EDF and private finance, and is projected to cost between £40.5bn and £47.7bn. Once complete, it is expected to supply about 7 per cent of the UK’s current electricity demand.

The committee said its inquiry would follow an NAO report due in spring 2026. That report is expected to examine current government spending on the project and the risks to achieving value for taxpayers’ money. PAC members are due to hear evidence from senior Department for Energy Security and Net Zero officials and representatives from Sizewell C.

The committee said written evidence would be invited for both inquiries in due course. It added that material already published elsewhere could not be accepted as evidence.

The PAC also announced an inquiry into the government’s intervention in British Steel. It said the NAO had found the government had spent £377m on the intervention so far, with no clear end date or exit strategy, while the company’s finances had not yet been stabilised.

Source: Public Accounts Commitee announcement