A dispute that saw hundreds of workers at Hinkley Point C nuclear power station walk out over “concerns” about working arrangements has been resolved.
BusinessLive understands between 200 and 300 workers employed by the £23bn plant’s main civil engineering contractor Bylor, a partnership between construction firms Laing O’Rourke and French counterpart Bouygues Travaux Publics, were involved in the stand-down staged last Friday (April 1).
The joint venture is delivering works worth more than £2.8bn to the development near Bridgwater in Somerset, which is one of the largest building projects in Europe.
Bylor employs a few thousand of the total 7,500 people working at the Hinkley Point C site, the vast majority of whom did not take part in the strike.
A spokesperson for Bylor said: “Whilst members of our Bylor Team continued to work as normal at Hinkley Point C on Friday, some chose to stand down. This group of workers expressed concerns about their working arrangements at Hinkley Point C.
“Bylor, in collaboration with EDF and the Unions, continue to hold discussions with our workforce regarding their concerns. Further to these discussions, Bylor are pleased to confirm that our workforce team have returned to work as normal today.”
The dispute comes after the plant's developer, French energy giant EDF, said it had launched a “new comprehensive review” - expected to be finalised by summer 2022 - to update the costs and schedule estimates of Hinkley Point C.
In documents filed to the French Financial Markets Authority, EDF said productivity had been “impacted” by onsite social distancing measures taken to enable construction to continue during the pandemic, while progress on works to install water cooling tunnels below the Bristol Channel had been slowed.
A legal challenge from environmental groups over a permit to dump mud dredged off Hinkley Point C at a site in the Severn Estuary off Portishead was recently dismissed by a High Court judge.
EDF added the plant's construction faced an “increase in risks”, including from the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Brexit, Covid, supply chain disruption and inflation.
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