Ministers have made available a further £341m of previously allocated funding for development work on the project, adding to the £170m the project was granted just last month.

The money will be used to ramp up activity at the Suffolk site, supporting continued preparation works such as constructing onsite training facilities for apprentices, further development of the plant’s engineering design, and investments in the local community. The money builds on the government’s existing £870m stake and will help drive progress towards the long-standing objective of reaching a Final Investment Decision on a new large-scale nuclear project this parliament.

Once complete, the facility is expected to cost at least £20bn and generate energy at a more expensive price when compared to renewables such as wind and solar.

The government has said it wants to rapidly expand the amount of nuclear energy generated in the UK in a bid to meet a quarter of the country’s electricity...