Once scrappy English town in running to be green energy powerhouse

Bridgwater in Somerset, once known for its social problems and a pervasive chemical “pong”, has been an underdog for so long that locals can scarcely believe the town is bidding to become Britain’s green energy powerhouse.

Once featured in a book of Crap Towns, Bridgwater announces itself with the ironic, Rio-trolling claim that it is “the home of carnival”. Already home to the first of a new generation of nuclear power stations, it is also hoping to host Britain’s biggest battery gigafactory.

The midsize town, straddling the muddy River Parrett, has been transformed by nearby Hinkley Point C, one of Europe’s biggest construction projects. The site is set to supply enough power for 6mn homes from two nuclear reactors.

Now Bridgwater is hoping that Tata, the Indian conglomerate that owns Jaguar Land Rover, will build a vast factory on the edge of the town, supplying batteries to a new generation of electric vehicles. The company is expected to choose imminently between Bridgwater and a site in Spain.

Government ministers are confident that Tata will build the gigafactory at Gravity, a 600-acre “smart campus” on the site of a former munitions factory that provided explosives for the RAF’s famous bouncing bombs.

Upwards of £500mn of subsidies, including discounted energy and a new motorway junction, could make it happen. Bosses at the Gravity site reckon a battery gigafactory could employ more than 5,000 staff.

It would be a big extra boost to Bridgwater, long seen as the unfashionable neighbour to the nearby county town of Taunton. Thanks to Hinkley Point, it is already in the ascendancy, its population swelling to more than 50,000, the town’s workforce learning new skills in welding, mechanics and construction to take jobs at the nuclear plant.

More than 9,000 people are directly employed in the 24-hour operation to build the power station and civic leaders hope their skills can be redeployed at the gigafactory and other local projects once it is built.

For Bridgwater it is the culmination of a 20-year effort to transform the local economy. Unlike the model adopted by many other depressed towns, civic leaders here put their chips on a revival based on manufacturing, not services.

“This is an industrial town,” said Ian Liddell-Grainger, Bridgwater’s Conservative MP, over a coffee. “If you look at the South West from Penzance to Gloucester, we are an anomaly — in a sea of services, we make stuff.”

Bridgwater has always made things: once noted for its brick and tile works, the town later acquired notoriety for the stench emanating from the British Cellophane works, which at one time employed about 3,000 people. “Bridgy” became known as the “smelly town” on the way to Cornwall.

When the factory finally closed in 2005, Bridgwater was plagued by joblessness and social problems. In response, the local Sedgemoor council set about embracing the town’s prime location on the M5 motorway and good rail connections to rebuild the town’s industrial base.

“We are very much the widget-makers, we stand alone,” Liddell-Grainger said. Müller, the German dairy company, has a milk factory here, while Mulberry has drawn on a local tradition of leatherwork to build a luxury goods factory in the town.

Bridgwater’s ambitions are supported by two key factors. The first is that Bridgwater and Taunton College has become a big provider of skilled workers, with 26,000 students enrolled, working in partnership with Hinkley Point C, which is supposed to come on stream in 2027.

There is a National College for Nuclear, alongside centres of excellence in fields such as construction and innovation, mechanics and welding. The EDF-led power station, backed by a one-third stake from Chinese nuclear company CGN, says it has put £5bn into the local economy since 2016.

The second driver is housing. Unlike many towns and villages in the scenic west country, Bridgwater seems largely untroubled by its expansion on to green fields. Duncan McGinty, former leader of Sedgemoor council, says new housing is “a sign of a vibrant economy”. Doug Bamsey, project leader at the Gravity site, agrees: “This area is pro-growth and pro-business. People want opportunities.”

Such is the scrappy town’s newfound confidence that Liddell-Grainger ill-advisedly declared in 2019 that nearby Taunton reminded him of the war-ravaged Syrian city of Aleppo. The MP chuckles: “I had to apologise. To Aleppo.”

In the town’s main street, leading down to the Parrett, 25-year-old Jessica Smith says the town has changed beyond recognition: “It’s definitely got better,” the teaching assistant said. “There are better jobs and more shops. People are more optimistic.”

Ani Ivanova, a section leader in a nearby cheesecake factory, says the town has changed in the 12 years she has lived here. “It feels more lively,” she says. “I liked Bridgwater because it was a quiet town — every year it is getting busier.”

Some 11 miles away is the prime reason for this renaissance: a vast landscape of more than 50 cranes and concrete towers rising above the grey Bristol Channel, where a new nuclear complex is taking shape alongside two defunct reactors.

Hinkley Point C has been heavily criticised for the sheer cost of the project and the high price of the power it will produce; the involvement of a Chinese company is also highly contentious.

But for 36-year-old Andrew Cockcroft, the locally born head of economic development at the project, it is a thing of wonder. “This is the epicentre of the drive for low carbon energy — and it’s just outside sleepy old Bridgwater.”

Cockcroft says Bridgwater and its newly skilled workforce could be a centre for nuclear, batteries and also play a role in developing new offshore wind farms off the south-west coast.

If Tata does build its gigafactory outside Bridgwater, it has the option of striking a discounted energy deal with Hinkley Point and in effect plugging itself into the station’s power cables, which pass by the Gravity site.

McGinty says a gigafactory would be a triumph for the town. “It is a journey we’ve been on to bring Bridgwater and the surrounding area into the world as it is now,” he said.