Consultation launched on the next gas distribution price control (GD23)

Today, we publish our GD23 price control draft determination for Northern Ireland’s gas distribution network (GDN) operators - firmus energy (Distribution) Limited, Phoenix Natural Gas Limited and SGN Natural Gas Limited, which covers a six year period from January 2023 to December 2028. 

The draft determination sets out our proposals for the funding the gas distribution network operators will have to run their businesses and invest in the gas network.

The draft determination also considers the expected impact of these proposals for consumers and are published in the context of the Department for the Economy's new Energy Strategy. 

Our key price control proposals include:

• Overall investment of £149.2m compared to £226.5m proposed by the GDNs. 
• Overall operational expenditure of £162.9m compared to £213.2m proposed by the GDNs.
• A move from RPI to adopt CPIH as the general measure of inflation.  Moving to CPIH provides a more equitable distribution of cost between today’s consumers and future consumers.
• Lower rates of return within the 2-3% range which reflects a trend of reducing financing costs and will result in lower costs for consumers.
• Bills for typical domestic consumers which will be lower than those proposed by the GDNs in their GD23 Business Plans. This would be £17 in the firmus energy area, £25 in the Phoenix Natural Gas area and £47 in the SGN area.  For Industrial and commercial customers, the difference would be much larger.

Written responses to our draft determination consultation should be received no later than noon on 26 May 2022.

Responses should be e-mailed to Paul.Harland@uregni.gov.uk and Gas_networks_responses@uregni.gov.uk

Further information on responding: 

• 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 Freedom of Information Act 2000, 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 and the Data Protection Act 2018.
• 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.

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