Consultation launched on SONI governance licence modifications

As the electricity TSO for Northern Ireland, SONI (System Operator for Northern Ireland) has a critical role to play in the delivery of Northern Ireland energy policy and enabling a successful energy transition. To fulfil this role and discharge its duties effectively, it is vital that SONI’s governance arrangements protect Northern Ireland consumers both now and in the future.

The paper we are publishing today has two purposes:

1. It sets out our policy position on the changes needed to SONI TSO governance following our review.
2. It sets out proposed modifications to SONI TSO’s licence that we consider necessary to implement this policy position. The proposed modifications are set out in Section 7 and Annex 1 of this paper.

This paper is the third stage of our SONI TSO governance review. As an initial step in this process we published a Call for Evidence and this was followed in April 2021 by a consultation on SONI governance proposals.

We have reviewed the responses received to our April 2021 consultation and consider that changes to SONI TSO’s governance are needed to ensure the company’s independence, transparency and accountability. 

The licence modifications would establish an independent SONI board, a general requirement for independence from EirGrid (where a derogation from the independence requirement is not in place), a derogation process and the establishment of a compliance officer and compliance plan.

We will take final decisions on governance once we have considered the responses to the consultation on the proposed licence modifications.

We are seeking views from all interested stakeholders on or before 17:00 on 4 March 2022.

Responses should be emailed to: 

Roisin.McLaughlin@uregni.gov.uk and Electricity_Networks_Responses@uregni.gov.uk

Copies of all documents will be made available in large print, Braille, audio cassette and a variety of relevant minority languages if required.

Your response may be made public by the Utility Regulator. If you do not want all or part of your response or name made public, please state this clearly in the response by marking your response as ‘CONFIDENTIAL’

If you want other information that you provide to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, under the FOIA, there is a statutory Code of Practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, amongst other things, with obligations of confidence. In view of this, it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential.

Information provided in response to this consultation, including personal information, may be subject to publication or disclosure in accordance with the access to information regimes (these are primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA)).

As stated in the GDPR  Privacy Statement for consumers and stakeholders, any personal data contained within your response will be deleted once the matter being consulted on has been concluded though the substance of the response may be retained.