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Early Draft Business Plan Consultation 2023-2028

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Early Draft Business Plan Consultation 2023-2028 Early draft business plan consultation 2023-2028 April 2021 1 Copyright © ENW Limited 2020 Our plan for a greener, more prosperous and more connected North West We know from speaking with thousands of our customers and stakeholders to develop this plan, that lots of different people are interested in what it says. Having engaged through a transparent process shaped by customer and stakeholder input for the past two years, there shouldn’t be any surprises. Ultimately, it’s our job to find the right balance between ambition, service delivery and ensuring it’s affordable for everyone. We’ve written this plan for customers and stakeholders. So whether you’ve been involved in our engagement yet or not, we hope you find the right level of detail, explained clearly and simply, so you can continue to share your views with us. Contents 1. Welcome to our draft plan 5 A few words from our CEO 5 Key sections and questions to consider as you read this plan 6 2. A summary of our plan 10 2.1. A network that’s fit for the future 10 Supporting community and local energy projects 11 Making sure vulnerable customers are not left behind 11 Improving customer service 11 Balancing bills with ambition 12 3. Why you can be sure we’ll deliver 14 Keeping our commitments 14 Delivering social obligations and customer service 15 Delivering reliability 16 Delivering on the environment 17 Delivering new connections 17 Innovation and continuous improvement 18 Being efficient and investing in the future 18 Our people 19 4. Giving customers and stakeholders a stronger voice 21 Setting up for success 22 Our six-stage process 23 Our engagement methods 26 Why you can trust our robust and high-quality engagement 32 How feedback shaped the plan 34 Building on our engagement for ED2 41 5. What we’ll deliver based on what you’ve told us 43 Meeting the needs of customers and network users 43 Maintaining a safe and resilient network 53 Delivering an environmentally sustainable network 73 Consumer Value Propositions 86 6. How we’ll enable delivery 88 Enabling our customers and stakeholders 88 2 Enabling our people and business 101 7. Keeping customers’ bills as low as possible 104 The impact of our plan on bills 104 Running an efficient business 105 How we’ll deal with uncertainties 105 8. Activities to deliver customer outcomes 108 Engaging with customers and managing network activities 108 Maintaining and repairing the network 114 Investing in the network 116 Running an efficient company 122 Performing our other business functions 124 9. Overall expenditure forecasts 126 Summary cost breakdown 126 Engaging with customers and managing network activities 128 Maintaining and repairing the network 130 Investing in the network 130 Running an efficient company 135 Significant projects 135 3 1. Welcome to our early draft plan 01 4 1. Welcome to our draft plan A few words from our CEO It gives me great pleasure to introduce our early draft business plan for the period 2023-2028 for consultation. This is the first public draft of our plan, prior to submitting an updated version to our regulator, Ofgem, on 1 July for review by their independent Consumer Challenge Group1. You’ll find that our proposals are well-advanced thanks to all your input so far, offering an exciting and ambitious vision for our region. The plan has been informed by more than 23,000 interactions with more than 18,000 customers and stakeholders to date – by far the largest and most far-reaching consultation exercise we have ever carried out. I’m incredibly grateful for the energy, enthusiasm and insights from all those who took part, especially throughout a tumultuous 2020. The pandemic meant we had to adapt our original consultation programme, moving events online, and asking our participants to stay engaged in the process, even as their own lives were overtaken by many competing demands. With that amount of engagement it’s perhaps unsurprising that we have heard some quite different views in some areas. The challenge of delivering stretching environmental ambitions on net zero while keeping bills low and making sure we don’t leave anyone behind is tough. You’ll see how we have made these trade-offs based on customer and stakeholder input in section 4.5 and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on whether or not you think we have got the balance right. Our research has shown that 80% of customers are willing to pay an additional £9.80 to achieve the ambitious proposals in this plan. However, that means 20% of our customers are not. We have worked hard to find a solution and through innovation and efficiencies, we believe we can deliver that high level of investment in the network for just a £2.14 per year addition to an average household bill. You can read more on how we’re keeping customers’ bills as low as possible in section 7. The result from all this work is an early draft plan that I believe will help facilitate a greener, fairer, more prosperous and more connected future for our region. There’s something for everyone and I hope you will find it an interesting and accessible read. Having consulted on key appendices in March we are not re-publishing them at this stage as we continue to work to update them for our next version of the plan. This is a consultation and we would like your views. Of particular note will be section 5 on what we propose to deliver. These proposals are based on more than two years of engagement but we still want to hear your 1 https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-updates/ofgem-sets-independent-panel-challenge-network-company- business-plans-next-price-controls 5 thoughts on them as we continue to refine the plan. We have listed some questions as a guide below, but please do comment on any part of the plan you wish. This specific consultation will close on Monday 3 May so that we can incorporate feedback into our 1 July submission to Ofgem. We will accept feedback beyond that date, but can’t guarantee that it will make it into our July submission. Ofgem’s Consumer Challenge Group will then give us further feedback on the plan before we submit a final version to Ofgem on 1 December, so we’ll be continuing to engage with you right up until then. Send your comments to [email protected] or go to www.enwl.co.uk/engagementhub. Thank you for your interest. Peter Emery Chief Executive Officer Electricity North West Key sections and questions to consider as you read this plan You can follow our suggested questions below in section 1.2.2, or feel free to dip into any part of the plan and comment on as much or as little as you like. If you only have a few minutes or are only interested in one aspect, please focus on that – all feedback is welcome. And if you need any help, drop us an email at [email protected]. Where do I start? We don’t expect everyone to have the time to read the entire plan in detail, but we suggest you start with our summary in section 2 to give you an overview of key areas. As well as using the questions listed below, here are links to key sections you can dive right into: Here you’ll find the seven priority areas that you’ve told us to focus on: • 5.1.1 Meeting customers’ needs • 5.1.2 Supporting electricity users in vulnerable circumstances • 5.1.3 Delivering a reliable network • 5.1.4 Building a resilient network • 5.1.5 Keeping our communities safe • 5.1.6 Leading the North West to net zero • 5.1.7 Our direct environmental impact Here are our plans for distribution system operation (DSO): • 6.1.2 A new world of distribution system operation And this is how the plans will affect you as a bill payer: • 7.1 Impact on customer bills 6 Key questions If you have 10 minutes… 1. Is the content understandable and accessible? 2. Did you find what you expected? 3. Is anything missing? 4. Does the plan offer value for money at a £2.14 a year increase on average domestic customer bills to deliver the proposals? See section 7 for more detail. If you have 30 minutes (as above, plus)… 5. Do you feel any feedback you’ve given us has been fairly reflected in the proposals? 6. Does anything need additional explanation or context? 7. Does the content strike the right balance to meet the requirements of customers, stakeholders, Ofgem and shareholders? 8. Is the plan ambitious enough? 9. Have we demonstrated how we have used robust and high-quality engagement to inform the plan? If you have an hour or more (as above, plus)… 10. Do you support our proposed Consumer Value Proposition on Smart Street in section 5.4? Should this be even more ambitious? 11. What do you think of the individual proposals in section 5? Bearing in mind both the cost to customers and the benefits of each proposal, in short for each, do you think we should be more ambitious, less ambitious, keep the proposal as it is or drop it from our plans? 12. We’d like further specific feedback on the following 12 proposals following feedback from our formal acceptability testing survey carried out with customers and stakeholders earlier this year.
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