NGN Online Stakeholder Conference - Northern Gas Networks

Annual Stakeholder Conference

We set out to give our stakeholders the opportunity to see the impact of their engagement over the year, the progress we’ve made on our commitments, and to understand objective observations from CEG. We also wanted to create an opportunity to recheck our direction and focus with our stakeholders, giving us the confidence that our strategic direction and plans are still in line with their thinking.

Date

8th September 2022

Audience

charity, 3rd sector agencies, community, faith and local interest groups, consumer groups health and service providers local government, utilities, academia.

Engagement

56 delegates

Objectives

Launch and share both CEG & NGN reports with our stakeholders, as well as updating stakeholders on our performance against our business plan commitments this year.
Check their satisfaction/acceptability of our performance and direction of travel with stakeholders, making sure to understand if it’s in line with their expectations
Understand how stakeholder expectations have changed in the current climate e.g energy crisis and post pandemic, to recheck the direction of focus for the business.
Engage with stakeholders to inform and shape the strategic focus for our annual business planning and identify what they think our future focus should.

Your comments & our responses

89.8%

of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that NGN is focusing on the right strategic priorities.

Communities and Social Obligation

You widely praised our approach to communities and social obligations, particularly liking the use of localised partner networks to roll out support. You were impressed at the level of ambition shown but are unsure whether even NGNs efforts would be enough for the expected winter crisis, and you highlighted missing areas such as closer partnerships with schools around fuel poverty and embedding the sustainability agenda into efforts to tackle the fuel crisis.

We will use this feedback to inform our strategic approach and shape our future engagement plans over the next year.

Net Zero/Whole Systems

84.2% agreed that you were in favour of our actions to support the decarbonisation of the network and argued that we should be pursuing labour market engagement, employee upskilling, and financing decommissioning with more urgency.

We will reflect on this direction and look at how we can prioritise recruitment, workforce engagement and upskilling, as part of our strategic focus on our energy futures objectives. We also recognise that there is a need to explore decommissioning as an option and will begin to look at developing our strategic approach to that over the next year.

Business resilience: People

77.1% agreed that you supported NGNs approach to ensure inclusion and diversity in the workplace. You largely supported efforts across inclusion, sector challenges and social mobility and you said you thought more could be done to ensure gender inclusivity across the workforce. You suggested that we needed to focus more on discussing career opportunities with schools, in order to fill skills gap which may be exacerbated by the industry’s ageing workforce.

The gaps that you identified, align with the areas we have already recognised need more focus. We have already developed plans around each of these areas and will explore how we can use your ideas to support these plans further and to help shape our business plan and strategic direction throughout the next year.