Our 2026-2031 Business Plan
We’re proud to share our RIIO-GD3 Business Plan, which covers the next gas distribution price control period of 2026 to 2031. This plan is the culmination of months of diligent work by SGN’s delivery teams and is shaped by the invaluable input we received from customers and stakeholders throughout its development.
A customer and stakeholder informed plan
To help ensure our plan reflects the needs of those who use and rely on our network, we ran our most extensive customer and stakeholder engagement programme to date. Through our 4-stage series of regular and varied engagement activities, involving a wide range of customers and stakeholders, we shared our thoughts, listened to opinions and acted on feedback to develop our plan. The result: a plan that we truly believe balances the needs and wants of all those connected to our network.
11,000+
engagements
10
engagement activities
21
research activities
161
primary and secondary insight reports
“…the engagement that SGN has done is sector leading and, through making more use of deliberative techniques, provides genuine insights that have helped them build their Plan.”
Every voice matters
We engaged with various customer and stakeholder groups through online and in-person events such as webinars, specialist roundtables, workshops, deliberative research panels and surveys. All feedback was analysed and assessed through our triangulation process which weighs up the input of differing individuals and groups. This means the end product, our Insight Bank, is calibrated and the decisions made using it are evidence-based and less biased.
- Determine what our research and engagement should cover. Decide which stakeholder and customer groups we need to engage.
- Design and deliver research and engagement utilising a range of methods to best meet objectives and answer strategic questions. Seek expert advice from independent consultants and ISG.
- Identify all relevant insight sources (primary and secondary) to reflect the views of different customers and stakeholders, and guard against confirmation bias.
- Identify common insights from data sources, plus any conflicting views and decide how these will be tackled. Additional research and engagement might be necessary.
- Assess sources for robustness. Triangulate insights, weighing up whether all groups should be treated equally or more emphasis placed on some than others (utilising a flexible rather than a rigid or ‘black box’ approach). Identify whether the views of any groups should be given more weight, e.g. experts or those customers who are disproportionally impacted.
- Record outcome of discussions between subject matter experts and ISG, what was decided and the rationale.
- Transparently share what we found out through research and engagement, and how this was validated through the triangulation process.
- Ensure the outcomes and subsequent decisions feed into the next stage of engagement and are written into the business plan along with the rationale. Update Ofgem RIIO-3 Stakeholder Engagement and Decision Log.
Read more about our engagement in Chapter 2 of our RIIO-GD3 Business Plan.
See exactly how customer and stakeholder feedback influenced our plan in our Stakeholder Engagement and Decision Log.
An industry recognised approach
We are proud to share that our GD3 customer research, in partnership with Strat7 Jigsaw, was shortlisted in the Sustainability Research category at the Market Research Society’s awards 2024.
