[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":62},["ShallowReactive",2],{"6VdJwKFPEb":3},{"data":4},{"id":5,"status":6,"title":7,"split":8,"strap":9,"intro":10,"blocks":11,"stats":39,"commitments":50,"next":51},22,"published","Transparency",0,"An open and transparent business","\u003Cp class=\"p1\">As the sole provider of an essential service, UK Power Networks is committed to transparency and welcomes scrutiny from all interested parties.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Cp class=\"p1\">We encourage stakeholders, especially our customers, to examine every aspect of our operations. Our performance data on safety, reliability, customer satisfaction, financial health, and environmental impact are openly accessible. After publishing our Open Data strategy last year, in 2023/24 we have continued to be open with our data, to foster a competitive energy market and support decarbonisation efforts.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp class=\"p1\">We want to make it as easy as possible for stakeholders to access and understand our performance metrics. This Annual Review exemplifies our commitment, alongside other reports such as our RIIO-ED2 Business Plan, our DSO Performance Panel Report and the Annual Vulnerability Report.\u003C/p>\n\u003Ch4 class=\"p1\">Incentivising our employees\u003C/h4>\n\u003Cp class=\"p2\">At UK Power Networks, we incentivise our employees to perform in alignment with our business vision. Our Company Incentive Plan rewards achievements in safety, network reliability, customer service, and cost efficiency, ensuring that all employees work towards shared goals agreed upon with stakeholders. Since our inception in 2010, our mission has remained constant: to deliver what our customers need at the lowest possible cost. We have made substantial strides in improving safety, network reliability, and customer service, while maintaining our position as the lowest cost Distribution Network Operator (DNO) in Great Britain.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp class=\"p2\">Financial incentives are linked to exceeding Ofgem’s targets for reliability and customer service, and we are penalised for underperformance. Our performance data are validated by independent assessors before we submit them to Ofgem. This means we are both transparent and accountable. In the regulatory year 2023/24, we earned £18 million from these Ofgem incentive schemes.\u003C/p>",[12],{"item":13},{"id":14,"title":15,"intro":16,"pages":17,"items":18,"case":38},41,"Transparency gender","\u003Cp class=\"p1\">Gender equality is a subject of particular importance in an engineering-based company such as ours. The inherent justice of gender equality is fully aligned with our vision and values, and we are committed to building a more balanced workforce, which is a better workforce.\u003C/p>",[],[19,26,32],{"id":20,"status":6,"sort":21,"title":22,"key":23,"fkey":14,"body":24,"cta":23,"intro":23,"stats":25},146,1,"Gender mix",null,"\u003Cp class=\"p1\">Gender diversity remains a challenge in our industry, which historically has been male dominated. We are actively working to address this imbalance through educational initiatives that challenge stereotypes and encourage greater participation of women and girls in STEM subjects.\u003C/p>",[],{"id":27,"status":6,"sort":28,"title":29,"key":23,"fkey":14,"body":30,"cta":23,"intro":23,"stats":31},147,2,"Gender pay gap","\u003Cp class=\"p1\">We are working hard, as you can read \u003Ca href=\"/responsible-business/our-people\">here\u003C/a>, to make UK Power Networks a company of equality and diversity. In 2023, we ranked second in the Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers List. Nevertheless, this year, 2023/24, we have seen an increase in both the median and mean pay gaps of 1.9% and 4.4% respectively.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp class=\"p1\">These rises are primarily the result of the combined effects of a pay agreement that provided significant pay increases for most employees and the high proportion of male employees in the higher-paid categories.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp class=\"p1\">We continue to work to close this gap, through a far-reaching Diversity and Inclusion programme. We have a Women in Leadership mentoring programme and, in 2023, we launched the Female Engineers Development Group.\u003C/p>",[],{"id":33,"status":6,"sort":34,"title":35,"key":23,"fkey":14,"body":36,"cta":23,"intro":23,"stats":37},148,3,"Investment in the network","\u003Cp class=\"p1\">Long‑term investment in new and existing assets is not taken into account in annual profit margins. In our view, it is a more helpful measure to compare how a business is investing the cash it generates. Over the past 10 years, we have reinvested an average of 85% of our operational cash flow into our assets, benefiting the 19 million people connected to our networks.\u003C/p>",[],[],[40,45],{"stat_id":41},{"id":42,"figure":43,"caption":44,"stat_fid":23},46,"90%","of UK Power Networks employees are covered by Trade Union Collective Agreements",{"stat_id":46},{"id":47,"figure":48,"caption":49,"stat_fid":23},70,"£18m","In 2023/24, the first year of RIIO-ED2, we earned £18 million from Ofgem incentive schemes",[],{"id":52,"status":6,"title":53,"split":8,"strap":54,"intro":55,"next":56,"blocks":57,"stats":60,"commitments":61},23,"Organisational resilience","Embedding resilience throughout","\u003Cp class=\"p1\">Resilience is a strategic imperative for us at UK Power Networks. It exemplifies our ability to anticipate and adapt to challenges, sudden or gradual, and absorb the shocks that they inflict.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Cp class=\"p1\">Organisational resilience depends on a deep-seated culture that permeates an organisation. It cannot be attached or acquired; the only way to achieve it is to embrace it wholeheartedly and make sure everyone in the organisation understands it and takes responsibility for their part in it. Resilience builds over time, with experience, practice and commitment. At UK Power Networks we have been building this culture over many years and it is an important element of our way of working.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp class=\"p1\">We were not subject to any events in 2023/24 that tested our readiness to withstand a crisis. That does not mean, however, that we did not continue to scan the horizon ceaselessly; if anything, it gave us the opportunity to refocus and deepen awareness throughout the business. We have a programme of communication and awareness-raising that reaches all levels of the business.\u003C/p>\n\u003Ch4 class=\"p2\">Revised British Standards Institution (BSI) guidance\u003C/h4>\n\u003Cp class=\"p1\">We align our organisational resilience with the BSI guidance (BS 65000). In 2023/24, this was revised to view resilience in more breadth, placing emphasis on the dependencies and interrelations of functions. It further suggests that an organisation’s strategy, business model and risk management are fundamental to building and maintaining organisational resilience. This fresh approach chimes with our own and we are matching our activities with this new Code of Practice.\u003C/p>\n\u003Ch4 class=\"p2\">A resilience dashboard\u003C/h4>\n\u003Cp class=\"p1\">We are beginning to be more explicit in how we measure our organisational resilience, as we recognise that what we choose to measure is what gets done. We are developing a dashboard that helps our leadership team track factors of resilience and issues relating to them and to identify areas where we should concentrate our efforts to reinforce our position.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch4 class=\"p1\">Introducing the principle of the pre-mortem\u003C/h4>\n\u003Cp class=\"p2\">In 2024, we started to encourage the use of pre-mortems more widely in resilience planning. A pre-mortem involves identifying a potential crisis that we could face as a business and defining it in as much detail as possible. Working backwards, we proceed to determine the steps and decisions that could have led to the event and our imagined failure to manage it. This technique is a valuable way of discussing the threats that face us and analysing them systematically. It also allows us to identify what actions we might take to prevent the circumstances arising.\u003C/p>\n\u003Ch4 class=\"p1\">Response to extreme weather\u003C/h4>\n\u003Cp class=\"p2\">As a DNO it is a fundamental aspect of our role to be able to operate in spite of extreme weather. Traditionally, this has referred to storms but, increasingly our preparation includes measures to deal with extreme heat.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp class=\"p2\">We prepare our plans meticulously in anticipation of every major event and we hold reviews afterwards to ensure we learn the lessons they teach us and make the relevant improvements. This aspect of our resilience planning proved to be crucial during the extreme weather conditions experienced throughout 2023 and the beginning of 2024. A series of named storms, which caused nationwide disruption, stress-tested every element of UK Power Networks’ severe weather response plans. Particularly noteworthy was Storm Isha, which was classified by the Met Office as a ‘red’ weather warning for high winds; this is the agency’s highest warning category. Within 24 hours, over 90% of affected customers had their electricity supplies restored. To ensure continuous improvement, we conducted a review of our response to the storms and we implemented improvements across the organisation.\u003C/p>",24,[58,59],56,57,[],[],1737733128375]