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Overview
Sizewell C is the largest construction project in the East of England and will be for most of the next decade. By early 2026 more than 2,000 people were working on the site at Leiston each day, and Sizewell C says the workforce will reach around 7,800 at peak, with two thirds needing somewhere to stay. That is a housing question as much as an engineering one, and it matters to the crews arriving on the Suffolk coast and to the owners of holiday lets, static caravans, spare rooms and second homes within an hour of the site. This guide sets out how the project houses its people, how much demand reaches the private market, and what both sides can do about it.
The numbers behind the demand
Sizewell C's accommodation briefing to local suppliers, published on sizewellc.com, gives the starting figures: around 7,800 workers at peak, about a third of them home-based, and the remaining two thirds, roughly 5,200 people, needing accommodation near the site.
Sizewell C has committed to housing a large share of its non-local workforce itself, so that pressure on private rents and tourist beds around Leiston, Saxmundham and Aldeburgh is contained. The three project-managed options are a campus on the construction site, a caravan park in Leiston and a converted holiday village at Pakefield near Lowestoft.
The horizon is long. The Final Investment Decision in summer 2025 unlocked £38 billion of funding, nearly £1 billion of contracts had gone to East of England businesses by January 2026 against a £4.4 billion commitment, and construction is expected to run for around ten years from the 2022 consent. This is a demand curve that rises through the late 2020s, not a short spike.