Shaping our plan

In the first phase of our business planning engagement we talked to a wide range of customers about their lives and took time to understand how they use energy now and in what way this may change in the future. This led to a comprehensive understanding of customers’ priorities.

We have since used this insight to talk to customers in more detail about their preferences so that we can reflect their views in our future investment, commitments and business plan performance targets. A key lesson learnt from this phase was the strong appeal among customers for improved support during power cuts, especially prioritisation of those in vulnerable circumstances.

As we engage with our customers we see that not everyone has the same priorities and preferences. In addition to identifying where there is consensus in views, we are using feedback to recognise differences in opinion and think carefully about how we can balance the ‘needs of the many versus those of the few’. This is commonly referred to as a ‘trade-off’ – where a challenging decision needs to be made regarding where we prioritise our resources.

In the latest stage of our plan we see a clear trade-off emerging between keeping bills as low as possible to ensure a fair, affordable price and improving the quality of the service provided to deliver good value for money. We are about to embark on a research phase to explore how much customers are willing to pay for improvement to our services, whilst keeping our proportion of the bill affordable.

Our business plan will be the culmination of our largest and most ambitious programme of customer and stakeholder engagement than ever before. In the final phase of our programme we asked customers and stakeholders how acceptable our draft business plan. Throughout February we will be consulting on key business strategies that will support our future business plan. To get involved and share your feedback and opinions with us, visit our engagement hub.