£900m is already contracted at Wylfa — and 70% of it is going to UK firms

There's a habit in North Wales of treating Wylfa as something that might happen. Decades of announcements will do that to a region. But the numbers published last week make the point plainly: the money is not coming someday. It is being spent now.

Great British Energy – Nuclear confirmed on 24 June that the UK SMR programme has contracted nearly £900m since 2023, with more than 70% of that going to UK firms — ahead of its own target — and around 3,000 jobs on site at peak (GOV.UK, 24 June 2026).

That's not a pipeline forecast. That's signed contracts, already let, already flowing.

Why the 70% figure is the important one

Large infrastructure programmes routinely promise local benefit and then buy from the same handful of international suppliers. A published British-content figure, reported against a target, changes the incentive. It means the programme has to keep finding UK firms to place work with — and it has to be able to show it did.

Rolls-Royce SMR chief executive Chris Cholerton tied that localisation directly to skills, framing UK contracting as how the programme builds long-term British capability rather than importing it. That's a strategic commitment, not a press line — and strategic commitments get written into contracts.

Here's what most SMEs miss about that. When a programme is measured on UK content and long-term skills, its Tier 1 contractors get measured on the same things. And they can't hit those measures on their own. They hit them through you — through the groundworks firm in Amlwch, the electrical contractor in Bangor, the plant hire outfit in Caernarfon. Your local credentials are their compliance.

The flow-down is where SMEs actually live

Nobody at an SME is bidding for the reactor. That's not the opportunity. The opportunity is the second and third tier underneath the big packages: enabling works, groundworks, drainage, fencing, security, plant, haulage, temporary works, welfare, accommodation, catering, waste, cleaning, professional services, training delivery. Around 3,000 people on site at peak generates an enormous amount of work that has nothing to do with nuclear engineering.

Those packages get let by Tier 1s who are under obligation to demonstrate UK and local content. When two firms can do the job at a comparable price, the tiebreaker is which one makes the main contractor's reporting look better.

Which is where the record comes in

Nuclear new-build is public-money infrastructure with local employment, skills and community benefit commitments attached, and those commitments flow down the chain rather than stopping at the top. Meanwhile Wales' socially responsible procurement duties commenced in March 2026, with annual reporting. The whole environment around Wylfa is evidence-hungry, and it is getting hungrier as packages get let.

So when the flow-down question arrives — and it will arrive as a box in a prequalification pack, not as a conversation — it won't ask whether you're a good local firm. It'll ask what you did, when, for how many people, and what it was worth.

Most Anglesey and Gwynedd firms are already doing the work. The apprentice from Ysgol Uwchradd Bodedern. The careers morning someone's site manager did without telling anyone. The staff hours given to a local club. It's all real social value and almost none of it is written down, so when the box appears it gets filled with generalities.

Start now, not when the tender lands

If you haven't got onto the supplier route yet, that's the first job — we covered how to get visible on the Wylfa supplier portal separately. But being registered only gets you asked the question. Having an answer is a different piece of work, and it's the one that takes months of small entries rather than one afternoon.

Owl Impact takes a logged activity — a school talk, an apprenticeship, a community project — and returns a costed social value figure built on recognised proxy values, in a professional report you can drop straight into a supplier pack or subcontract bid. Two minutes per session. Over a year, that's a dated, costed history no competitor can assemble retrospectively.

£900m is already committed. The subcontract packages under it are being let now. Start the record while it still has time to accumulate.