Stakeholder engagement
How we engage with our stakeholders
Listening to and learning from our stakeholders is a central part of our culture and way of working. Understanding emerging challenges, needs and opportunities through engagement helps us focus on actions that make a real difference for our customers. For example, engagement has played a crucial role in shaping how we design and communicate services for customers who are on the Priority Services Register (PSR) and need extra support during a power cut. You can read more about this development here, where we talk about our Spotlight project.
During RIIO-ED2¹, we will report annually on the outcomes of our stakeholder engagement programme through a new Ongoing Engagement Report. You can see the 2023/24 Ongoing Engagement Report here.
Below we set out a selection of our engagement activities this year and the outcomes they helped to deliver.
- RIIO-ED2 is the five-year regulatory price control period which covers the period from April 2023 – March 2028
Our key stakeholders
Partners
We engage with partners with complementary capabilities, expertise and capacity to design and deliver initiatives and services that benefit our customers.
Over 148,000
customers in or at risk of fuel poverty supported through one-to-one support and energy advice in 2023/24
How we engage
- Forums, workshops, events and conferences to help us understand key issues and share our plan and progress.
- Expert panels and councils provide insight into strategic issues.
- Collaboration to design and deliver initiatives.
- Training and upskilling.
Key outcomes of engagement
- Over 86,000 additional customers registered for extra support during power cuts through our expansion of data sharing with water companies to include the sharing of historical PSR registrations.
- Developed new ways of working to provide Fuel Poverty partners with longer term certainty enabling them to plan, deliver and scale up support to more customers over the next five years.
- Supported and trained our partners to deliver high-quality service and maximise impact, resulting in 92.1% customer satisfaction with fuel poverty support.
- Grew domestic participation in flexibility through launching demand turn-up product, with 24,000 households receiving more than £1.3m of free electricity through collaboration with Octopus (see here).
Customers
We engage with customers to understand their evolving needs and develop services and initiatives that meet them.
93%
PSR customer satisfaction
How we engage
- Customer research, including surveys, focus groups, and our online inclusive customer panel.
- Forums, workshops and events.
- Feedback on customer experience.
- Involving customers in trials.
- Targeted campaigns, such as bus-side advertising, community events, social media presence.
- Letterdrops, web pages and drop-ins about major projects impacting their area.
Key outcomes of engagement
- Increased PSR registrations by 9.4% on 2022/23 to 2.6m (77% of eligible households) through data-led, targeted campaigns.
- Reached over 27,000 customers with in-depth fuel poverty support, and over 6,000 customers with new in-depth support that targets overcoming key barriers in the transition to Net Zero.
- In 2023/24, we trialled the deployment of portable batteries for medically dependent customers without power for over four hours. 67% of customers rated the service 10/10 and we have incorporated our learnings in the business to make it even better for our customers.
- Launched the Green Home Support Service, an accessible self-serve tool to help renters and homeowner customers understand actions they can take to decarbonise, regardless of their budget.
Communities
We engage with local authorities, community energy groups and politicians to understand what they need from us to best serve their communities, from delivering Net Zero in their local areas to providing support during major disruption.
87
of 133 local authorities are using Your Local Net Zero Hub
How we engage
- Workshops, training and information sharing with local authorities, including videos and podcasts.
- Regular meetings and site visits with politicians.
- Community events.
- Discussions with community energy groups.
- Involvement in trials.
- Indirectly via organisations representing community interests.
Key outcomes of engagement
- Supported all 11 Local Resilience Forums in our area of operation to build resilience plans in preparation for a power cut.
- Launched Your Local Net Zero Hub, a free online energy planning tool that makes it easier for local authorities to create robust and investable energy plans. The tool is backed by over 160 datasets and organised into themes to support decarbonisation planning. Local authorities can now share their plans with us through, Your Local Net Zero Hub.
- Actively supported 39 local authorities and development areas through their local area energy planning. Reviewed the published decarbonisation plans of all 133 local authorities in our regions.
- Delivered enough power to every Motorway Service Areas (MSA) in our region, enabling more than 200 high powered chargers to be deployed at MSAs across our area.
Colleagues
We engage with our employees to understand what matters to them in their work so we can attract and retain a talented, happy workforce.
Ranked 2nd
in the Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers List
How we engage
- Employee engagement surveys.
- Fortnightly CEO video updates to staff.
- Internal publications including magazines, podcasts, newsletters and campaigns.
- CEO staff forums.
- Ongoing training and development.
Key outcomes of engagement
- Remained in the Top 10 Best Big Companies to Work For List.
- Continued to be one of only 5% of companies worldwide with Platinum status with Investors in People (IiP).
- Awarded 2nd place in the Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers List.
- 76% of those graduating from Leadership Academy awarded a distinction.
- Won the most prestigious prize in the UK utility industry, 'Utility of the Year', at the Utility Week Awards.
- Maintained position within an elite worldwide group that has gained the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) Corporate Certification advanced – the only DNO and one of 16 companies worldwide that has been awarded Platinum.
Action plans to reduce supply chain emissions
In 2021, 50 of our 1,250 suppliers accounted for 63% of the total supply chain emissions, so we have focused on these highest-emitting suppliers.
We identified suppliers with the highest emissions and engaged with the top 12 of them to develop targeted action plans. These plans focus on reducing emissions where the biggest impact can be made. More widely, over 80% of our supply chain have signed up to our code of conduct, which includes environmental commitments, resulting in a total carbon saving of approximately 15%.
