Energy and infrastructure
Furnished apartments and houses near the site, arranged for 20 to 300 workers across a multi-year build or a six-week outage, on one contract.
The short version
Sizewell C expects up to 7,900 workers at peak, of whom approximately 5,880 would be non-home-based and seeking accommodation locally (SZC Accommodation Strategy). Consented project accommodation — a single 2,400-bed campus plus a caravan park — houses up to 3,000 (same strategy). The gap is written into the plan: roughly 1,200 workers in the private rented sector, 800 in tourist accommodation and 880 owner-occupied (same strategy).
If you are the subcontractor, that gap is your problem. Campus allocation goes to the tier-one and the trades on site earliest; the specialist package arriving in year four houses itself. So the question at mobilisation is not "is there a campus" but "what is left within a commutable radius once it is full, and can somebody hold twelve houses in a town of five thousand for thirty months".
Bonjour Residences is an independent agency. We do not own units. We source them from a vetted partner network — often direct from local owners who never list online — and we stand behind the booking, the invoice and the support for the length of the stay. This page covers how that works on energy and major infrastructure projects; the wider service sits on our contractor accommodation hub.
The demand curve
Energy and infrastructure accommodation is two products with one postcode.
The new build runs for the better part of a decade. Sizewell C construction "will last up to 12 years", which the project itself notes enables "long-term and year-round occupancy" (Sizewell C Accommodation Management System). Inside that, the trade mix rolls over completely: the civils workforce peaks just above 3,600 in year five, the mechanical and electrical workforce around 3,300 roles in year seven, and from year ten headcount sits well below 2,000 (SZC Accommodation Strategy). Lyon–Turin has the same shape: 3,190 people across its sites in mid-2025 (Le Dauphiné) against an official peak of "près de 3000" (Démarche Grand Chantier), commissioning end-2033 (TELT). Lubiatowo-Kopalino pours first concrete in 2028 and expects up to 12,000 people on site at peak between 2030 and 2035 (Pomeranian Voivodeship Office).
The outage is the opposite: short, intense, and known years in advance. In France, unit outages run "3 à 6 semaines par chantier entre mars et octobre", and in 2012 some 22,000 external workers were mobilised for that maintenance work, of whom more than 19,500 worked inside the nuclear zone (CCI — La maintenance du parc nucléaire). Contractors carry close to 80% of maintenance activity, and a ten-yearly inspection alone can require more than 1,500 workers across trades (same source). Seven to eight simultaneous outages can hit the French fleet at once (Arrêt de tranche). The Nordic pattern repeats at smaller scale: around 1,500 subcontractor employees took part in Olkiluoto's 2025 outages (TVO), roughly 1,400 in 2024 including 550 specialists from abroad (TVO), and around 3,000 people were engaged in one year's outages at Forsmark (ENERGInyheter). In the UK, one Torness statutory outage brought more than 500 extra workers on site for nine weeks (Power Engineering), and Sizewell B's brought in more than 1,000 (No2NuclearPower).
The planning consequence: outage dates are published. Olkiluoto's calendar already runs to 2029 (TVO) and Ringhals publishes its 2026 windows (Vattenfall). Book the housing before the competition for it starts and it is usually the difference between a twenty-minute commute and an hour each way.
Named projects
| Project | Location | Developer | Scale | Peak construction workforce |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sizewell C | Leiston, Suffolk, UK | SZC Co. | 3.2 GW, ~£38bn (2024 prices) (Sizewell C) | Up to 7,900 (SZC) |
| Hinkley Point C | Bridgwater, Somerset, UK | EDF | Unit 1 targeted 2029–2031 (EDF) | ~10,000 forecast (EDF); ~12,000 on site 2025 (BBC) |
| Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link | Rødbyhavn (DK) – Puttgarden (DE) | Femern A/S, built by FLC | €7.4bn framework, in service 2029 (BMV) | Not published — 2,000+ Danish side, ~200 German side, Aug 2025 (Femern) |
| Lyon–Turin base tunnel | Maurienne (FR) – Susa (IT) | TELT | €11.1bn, 164 km of tunnels (TELT) | Close to 3,000 (Démarche Grand Chantier) |
| Lubiatowo-Kopalino | Choczewo, Pomerania, PL | Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe | ~192bn zloty; units from 2036 (Power Technology) | Up to 12,000, 2030–2035 (gov.pl) |
| Dunkirk Battery Valley — Verkor and ProLogium | Dunkirk, Hauts-de-France, FR | Verkor; ProLogium | ProLogium is a €5.2bn project, ground broken February 2026 (ProLogium) | Not published |
| Stellantis–CATL Figueruelas | Figueruelas, Zaragoza, ES | Contemporary Star Energy | Up to €4.1bn (Invest in Spain); complete by March 2028 (Electrive) | ~2,000 Chinese workers on construction, 3,000 Spanish staff hired later (Electrive) |
| Eni Storage Systems Brindisi | Brindisi, Puglia, IT | Eni Industrial Evolution and FIB | Works launched 6 July 2026; 16 GWh/year by 2030 across two plants (Seri Industrial) | Not published |
| The Great Grid Upgrade | England and Wales | National Grid | £16bn programme | Not published — delivery teams scaled from 200 to 1,000 in the first year |
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
Where a developer has not published a peak figure, we say so rather than estimate it.
Why the market is tight
Leiston has a population of 5,508 and an ONS average monthly rent of £773. Three-bedroom houses there have been advertised to workers at £3,000 and £3,100 a month, and a two-bedroom flat at £3,045 (BBC; BBC). Homes that typically let for £1,500 are now priced at around £3,000, and lettings agents describe the demand as being for "service solutions" — short-term arrangements including bills and cleaning (BBC). Suffolk's response is contractual: the Deed of Obligation requires initiatives delivering at least 1,200 bedspaces before the sixth anniversary of the Commencement Date, funded on an assumed average cost of £7,000 per additional bedspace (East Suffolk Council). Those bedspaces exist as an obligation because the market on its own does not have them.
Hinkley Point C shows how far a campus-led strategy still leaves you short. EDF's own campus sites provide 1,500 rooms (EDF) — 986 bedrooms at the Sedgemoor Campus in Bridgwater and 510 at the on-site Hinkley Campus (Somerset Council). A £7.5m housing fund is expected to deliver more than 4,000 new bed spaces locally, and EDF states plainly that for the rest of the away-from-home workforce it is relying on "growing capacity in the private rental sector" (EDF). Around 900 workers are housed in a converted holiday park at Brean (EDF), whose 900 chalets are 900 of only 2,000 self-catering chalets in the resort (BBC); and in 2025 a fourth campus for 1,000 workers was proposed near junction 24 of the M5 to relieve pressure on the local housing market (BBC).
Elsewhere the shortage is stated outright. In the Maurienne, the public interest programme says the tunnel works will employ more than 2,000 people, 1,600 to 1,700 of them to be housed locally, and that "l'offre de logements proposés à la location est insuffisante pour tous les accueillir" — with landlord grants up to €40,000 per dwelling to bring vacant, dilapidated housing back into use (Commune d'Avrieux), and local reporting warning those arrangements risk saturating quickly (France Bleu). In Poland, the signed worker-village contract covers "niecałe 10 procent" of demand — around 1,000 people, first 500 rooms due in 2028 — and everyone else is expected to use the existing accommodation base across Pomerania (Polska Morska). That base is screened selectively: of 843 properties submitted, 233 were chosen (Nasze Miasto).
How we house this sector
Nuclear new build runs long rotations: contractor postings at Hinkley Point C describe a 10/4 rotation of nine ten-hour shifts plus a six-hour shift every second Thursday (Mactech), and workers report twelve-hour shifts rotating four days on, four off, four nights (Indeed). On Lyon–Turin, 940 of the measured jobs — 44% — are shift posts (Observatoire du Grand Chantier n°26). Both HS2's planning material and Sizewell C expect non-local workers to stay during the week and travel home at weekends (HS2; Sizewell C). We plan for that: self-catering kitchens because night-shift workers do not eat on a restaurant's timetable, laundry in the unit, parking, and rooms allocated so two people on opposite shifts are not sharing a wall and a bathroom.
For a three-to-six-week outage we hold a block against your rota rather than per person per night, stagger check-ins as trades arrive in sequence, and release beds on your demobilisation date. Where the client runs its own listing route — EDF's plants operate a temporary accommodation platform for contractor staff on planned outages (EDF Bugey), Sizewell C an Accommodation Management System (Sizewell C) — we work alongside it for the volume it cannot cover.
Fehmarnbelt is built from two coastlines in two countries, its tunnel village residents drawn from more than 40 nationalities (Femern). Lyon–Turin runs from Savoie into Piedmont. Figueruelas is being built partly by a workforce arriving from outside the EU (Electrive). We cover 27 European markets plus project work in the United States, so sites on both sides of a border stay one booking, one contact and one invoice.
Fehmarnbelt is the benchmark. FLC Village accommodates 1,344 residents in single en-suite rooms of a minimum 8.8 m², with internet, noise and light-proofing, an openable window, refrigerator, wardrobe, desk and weekly cleaning (Femern.info) — and accommodation outside the village must meet the same minimum requirements (Femern), checked for size, internet access and toilet facilities (Femern). Sizewell C's platform likewise requires providers to evidence gas, electrical and fire safety compliance (Sizewell C). We source to that standard as a matter of course, because somebody on these projects will ask to see it.
Process
Send the requirement. Site postcode, headcount, dates, budget, rota. A postcode and a headcount is enough to start.
Get tailored options. Sourced from partners in that market, including owners who never list online.
Confirm once. We handle booking coordination, contracts and staggered check-ins with every owner.
We hold the line. One WhatsApp channel for your construction crew, one invoice for your finance team, for the length of the stay.
For finance and procurement
One consolidated VAT-compliant invoice covering every property and country on the project, in your local currency where we can — which matters when a tunnel or grid package spans two tax jurisdictions and the accommodation cost is capitalised.
Corporate contracts run on 30-day terms, with no personal cards exposed and no individual receipts to submit against a per-diem policy.
One onboarding, one set of compliance documents, one contact — not a new vendor for every plant, portal and campus. See pricing for how rates are built.
Coverage
Coverage runs to 27 European markets plus project work in the United States — all live projects. Related sectors: data centre construction, semiconductor fab construction, pharma commissioning.
Questions
Most of our work here. Sizewell C's consented strategy assumes around 1,200 workers in the private rented sector and 800 in tourist accommodation at peak, on top of the 3,000 in project accommodation (SZC Accommodation Strategy). We source in that space, from vetted partners, since we do not own units.
As close as the market allows, and we give you the honest radius before you commit. Sizewell C forecasts some workers looking up to an hour away (Sizewell C); Poland's inventory for Lubiatowo-Kopalino screens on a 45-minute commute (Pomeranian Voivodeship Office).
The benchmark contractually enforced at Fehmarnbelt: single en-suite rooms of a minimum 8.8 m², internet, noise and light-proofing, weekly cleaning — which also applies to housing outside the tunnel village (Femern.info; Femern).
Yes. Fehmarnbelt and Lyon–Turin both cross a national border, and each runs as one booking with one consolidated VAT-compliant invoice.
It can. The European Commission states that host-state core conditions applying to posted workers include "the conditions of workers' accommodation where provided by the employer to workers away from their regular place of work", and allowances or reimbursement covering travel, board and lodging (European Commission — Posted workers). We are not advisers on this — talk to your own employment counsel — but we can document what we have arranged, per property, for your compliance file.
Teams of 1 to 200+, coordinated as one booking with staggered check-ins as trades arrive.
It usually does change — Sizewell C's trade profile turns over between the civils peak in year five and the M&E peak in year seven (SZC Accommodation Strategy). We hold the flexibility in the block of properties rather than in the contract.
Site postcode, headcount, mobilisation date and rota — enough for us to come back with real options in that market.
