Providing services for all

Our Customer Vulnerability Strategy builds upon the work we’ve already undertaken to help protect customers in vulnerable situations.

Our new strategy is our most ambitious and challenging to date. It details our goal of keeping all our customers safe, warm and independent in their homes as well as our ambition to never leave a customer vulnerable without gas.
 
The overarching principle of our strategy is to provide services for all, recognising the requirements of each customer individually and tailoring services to meet their needs. Our strategy has been developed against three tiers - our aim, our strategy to plan and our plan to commitments.


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Our proposed future strategy recognises and acts on this through four key priority areas:

Identifying customer needs and joining up support services

We continue to work to understand the many and varied situations that can lead to vulnerability across the communities we serve. We will help all of our customers to understand the range of additional support available to those in vulnerable situations so that we and others can better serve their needs.

Our commitments
  • Have 2 million direct conversations to raise Priority Services Register (PSR) awareness.
  • Form over 80 strategic programme and project partnerships.
  • Deliver annual vulnerability awareness training for all customer facing colleagues.
  • Innovate to deliver new products and services for customers in vulnerable situations.

Going beyond to never leave a customer vulnerable without gas

We recognise that an absence of gas to people’s homes and businesses can leave anyone vulnerable and seek to provide a range of additional welfare and technical support, especially to those who need it most.

Our commitments
  • Offer personalised welfare provisions for all customers in vulnerable situations (beyond the Priority Services Register).
  • Partner with charities to support vulnerable customers with internal appliance/installation repairs and replacements across all our networks.

Protecting our customers from the dangers of carbon monoxide

We will continue to raise awareness of the dangers of carbon monoxide by expanding the reach of our awareness and education programmes and distributing potentially life-saving carbon monoxide alarms.

Our commitments
  • Educate 200,000 of those most at risk to the dangers of carbon monoxide.
  • Issue 3 million carbon monoxide alarms over RIIO-2.
  • Form partnerships with all Fire and Rescue, NHS Trusts and Ambulance services in our footprint.
  • Repair or replace 15,000 unsafe appliances for those who need it most.

Tackling affordability and fuel poverty

We are assessing the best ways to provide whole home solutions to tackle and reduce fuel poverty. This will include delivering fuel poor gas network extensions and in-house interventions for customers on and off the gas network. We are considering how to improve affordability by offering energy and income advice to customers in vulnerable situations.

Our commitments
  • We will make 36,500 interventions to support those in fuel poverty including:
    • At least 6,250 fuel poor connections.
    • At least 5,000 additional in-house fuel poor interventions.
    • Offer income and energy advice to 25,250 customers.
  • Trial a pioneering new approach to national funding for fuel poverty in England.
  • We will continue to innovate in developing methods to better target those that should qualify for support.