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The government has confirmed that the Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk will cost £38 billion—nearly double its original estimate of £20 billion.

As usual, the public is expected to pick up the bill.

According to Sizewell C’s managing director Julia Pyke, early projections simply “did not account for inflation or risk”.

Just like that, the numbers have jumped.

And once again, the taxpayer is on the hook—for an extra £1 a month on their energy bills for at least a decade, while the project lumbers ponderously toward a completion date in the mid to late 2030s.

It’s hard not to feel a sense of déjà vu, because we really have been here before.

HS2, Hinkley Point C, Crossrail and countless other major UK infrastructure projects have all followed the same pattern: big promises, slick PR, optimistic costs… and then, once the concrete is poured and the headlines fade, the real figures begin to emerge—and they’re never pretty.

The political magic trick: announce low, spend high

This isn’t just bad accounting – it’s a political strategy.

Governments—of all stripes—lowball initial costs to secure buy-in from both the public and Parliament.

Once construction begins and contracts are locked in, the real spending begins to spiral.

• HS2 started life as a high-speed rail dream linking London to Manchester and Leeds. Originally estimated at £33 billion, it ballooned to more than £100 billion before vast sections of the project were abandoned. Now, what remains is being mocked as a grotesquely overpriced white elephant.

• Hinkley Point C, the UK’s first new nuclear plant in decades, was forecast to cost £18 billion and be running by 2017. It’s still under construction and will now cost £46 billion—with no power expected until 2031 or later.

• Crossrail was meant to be a shining example of modern UK engineering. It ran £4 billion over budget and was delivered years late.

And it’s not just physical infrastructure – let’s not forget the £10 billion blown on a failed NHS IT system, or the Olympic budget that quadrupled from £2.4 billion to nearly £9 billion.

These aren’t isolated incidents.

This is how the system works.

The public pays – again and again

Each time this happens, the costs are quietly passed to the public:

• Through taxation (either now or down the line)

• Through higher utility bills, as in Sizewell C

• And through opportunity cost—because when billions are funnelled into spiralling megaprojects, that money isn’t going to schools, hospitals, or the social care system that’s on its knees

Chancellors—already under pressure to maintain credibility with financial markets—are forced to scramble.

They cut local authority budgets.

They delay pay rises for nurses.

They privatise public services to raise quick cash.

And the same public who were sold the dream of “world-leading infrastructure” end up footing the bill for elite mismanagement.

Who profits from the chaos?

Despite ballooning costs and missed deadlines, someone always profits.

Contractors.

Consultants.

Financial intermediaries.

And in Sizewell C’s case, private investors like La Caisse, EDF, Centrica, and Amber Infrastructure, who will walk away with stakes in the project, while the UK government—in reality, the taxpayer—assumes the risk.

As Alison Downes of pressure group Stop Sizewell C put it:

“It is astounding that it is only now, as contracts are being signed, that the government has confessed that Sizewell C’s cost has almost doubled to an eye-watering £38 billion—a figure that will only go up.”

She’s right.

This is public subsidy dressed up as private investment.

And it happens because there’s no proper accountability.

A system built to fail (and to hide it)

The underlying governance is broken:

• There’s no binding mechanism to penalise contractors for overruns.

• Independent oversight is weak, often overridden by political expedience.

• Risk assessments are sanitized to keep headline figures politically palatable.

• And government departments regularly sign “cost-plus” contracts, which reward companies even when they exceed budgets.

The National Audit Office has flagged these issues for years.

Nothing changes – because the people writing the cheques never personally pay the price.

What could be done differently?

It doesn’t have to be this way. Other countries manage large-scale projects without haemorrhaging public money:

• Norway uses its sovereign wealth fund to carefully invest in infrastructure, with strict controls and long-term return criteria.

• Germany has prioritized decentralized renewable energy over centralised mega projects, avoiding many of the risk traps.

• Japan’s bullet trains, arguably the most complex rail systems on earth, are built on time and on budget—because they’re designed and delivered by experts, not politicians.

We need to rethink how Britain does infrastructure—starting with transparent forecasting, proper independent oversight, and binding penalties for overruns.

And crucially, the public must not be made the guarantor of every financial risk taken by private partners.

A country that can’t build honestly

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has declared that “it is time to do big things and build big projects in this country again.”

But we’ve heard this before.

Until our political system stops treating public spending as a PR exercise, every new megaproject will risk becoming another slow-motion car crash.

Sizewell C isn’t just a nuclear plant.

It’s a warning sign – about how Britain builds; about how ministers spin; and about how, in the end, it’s always the public who pays.

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