Our Business Plan 2021 - 2026

Transforming experiences

For customers, communities
and colleagues

Download full report PDF (7.5 MB)

Quick links

Executive summary

Our ambitious Plan aims to transform experiences and meet the priorities of our customers, colleagues and the communities we serve.”

Download Executive summary PDF (7.5 MB)

Steve Fraser
Chief Executive Officer

  • “Efficient costs driving a 10% reduction in customer bills and delivering a safe and reliable supply for less than 33p per day”
  • “Enhance services to make a real difference to customers in vulnerable situations driving a social value of over £537m”
  • “Creating practical solutions to deliver clean gas to meet the UK’s Net Zero emissions challenge”
  • “We will be fair and transparent, building trust in how we operate and making a sustainable difference in our communties.”

Our vision

Our outcomes

Trusted to act for our communities

Being trusted by our customers is extremely important to us. We’re an essential public service provider so it’s important that you trust us to act responsibly for our communities and always deliver on our promises.

Tackling climate change

Protecting the environment and transforming our energy system is hugely important for us and the communities we serve – now and for the future.

A quality experience

We're committed to providing an outstanding experience. That's why we're putting new standards in place to measure and significantly improve in this area over the next five years.

A resilient network

You've told us that maintaining a reliable gas supply that keeps our customers, employees and the general public safe is the most important part of what we do.

Our commitments

We have worked with, and listened to, our customers, stakeholders and employees to create our most stretching and bespoke set of commitments. We have applied a systematic process to ensure they are robust, well evidenced and valued.

Keeping the energy flowing safely & reliably

A Plan which maintains the outstanding levels of safety and reliability that our customers rely on.

Our commitments

  • 99.9% reliability keeping customers on gas
  • 1,705km of old metallic mains replaced each year - a distance greater than John O'Groats to Land's End
  • 35mins world class emergency response service with average arrival time of 35 minutes
  • > £500m cost efficiency savings for customers embedded in our Plan

A quality experience for all our customers and stakeholders

A Plan which focuses on improving the experience of all our customers, including targeted support through our vulnerability strategy.

Our commitments

  • 60% reduction in time interrupted for customers in multi-occupancy buildings
  • 36,500 interventions to support households in fuel poverty
  • 2m direct conversations to raise awareness of the Priority Services Register
  • 3m alarms issued and 200k customers educated on the dangers of carbon monoxide

Tackling climate change and improving the environment

An Environmental Action Plan which demonstrates our leadership on tackling climate change by innovating and driving momentum to create pathways to decarbonation.

Our commitments

  • 14 –17% reduction in leakage from our network
  • CO2 carbon neutral in other operations by 2028 with zero emissions emergency response vehicles across our region
  • HyNet innovation to decarbonise the North West with hydrogen
  • Clean gas enabling network capacity for greener resources

Trusted to act for our communities

A Plan which builds trust that we are acting in the best interests of our communities and embracing whole system thinking.

Our commitments

  • £6m p.a. >1% post-tax profit invested back into our communities through our charitable foundation - c. £6m p.a.
  • >10% saving p.a. in customer bills in real terms (excluding inflation)
  • £537m net social value delivered for our communities through our Consumer Value Proposition
  • 60% of colleagues giving back to our communities through volunteering

Our communities

We operate across four gas distribution networks: East of England, North London, North West and West Midlands, providing services to a diverse range of customer and stakeholder groups. Almost 50% of UK gas customers are served by our pipelines and we provide them with the energy they need to stay safe and warm. Each area has its own geographical and social requirements and we are committed to providing a service that meets the specific needs of the communities we serve.

Find out what we do in our regions below:

Our North West network covers around 2.7m customers in the third most populated region of England. It consists of the five counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside, and has a mix of rural and urban landscape.

Read our North West highlights

East of England is our largest network serving 4m customers across East Midlands and East Anglia, having significant levels of customers in rural locations from Humberside down through Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.

Read our East of England highlights

Our West Midlands network is centred on the UK’s second largest metropolitan area of Birmingham and includes a number of smaller urban areas that effectively constitute local sub-networks within the network. It serves around 1.96m customers.

Read our West Midlands highlights

Our North London network, serving around 2.3m customers, extends from Central London, covering north of the River Thames, to High Wycombe in the west and Southend-on-Sea in the east.

Read our North London highlights

Chapters

Download our Business Plan in full PDF (7.5 MB)

Our Business Plan sets out how we want to work with our customers in delivering our plans for the future. It will now be subject to a regulatory review process and is published here in the interests of transparency and to facilitate meaningful stakeholder engagement.

Appendices

#Cadentvoices

Thanks for reading our Business Plan. Join the conversation and let us know what you think of our commitments.