The energy watchdog for Great Britain has fined three companies £8m for failing to respond to some gas leak emergencies quickly enough, potentially putting the public at “serious risk”.
Ofgem said the three firms – Cadent Gas, Scotland Gas Networks (SGN Scotland) and Southern Gas Networks (SGN Southern) – had agreed to pay the fine after missing callout targets that require them to attend suspected gas leaks within one to two hours in 97% of cases.
An investigation by the regulator found that all three had fallen short of that target between 2022 and 2023. Ofgem said the fines would be paid into the regulator’s voluntary redress fund “in acknowledgment of the potentially serious risk to the public in failing to meet these targets”.
Ofgem’s director of market oversight and enforcement, Cathryn Scott, said: “The potential risk to households and businesses if gas leaks aren’t investigated quickly is significant, so it’s right that the companies involved have acknowledged the seriousness of missing these targets.”
Scott said the regulator was confident that all three companies had since improved their systems and processes to “make sure this doesn’t happen again” and had met their targets in the two years since the breach.
“We take compliance with our rules incredibly seriously, and as demonstrated with this case, will not hesitate to take action when companies fail to meet their obligations across the board,” she added.
SGN Southern received the largest penalty, £5.8m, after falling short of targets by up to 5.1%. Cadent will shell out £1.5m for missing targets by up to 2.1%, while SGN Scotland will pay £700,000, for a 0.4% shortfall.
The companies blamed the missed targets on an “unforecastable” cold spell in December 2022 that piled pressure on their emergency response teams.
A spokesperson for SGN said: “We take our responsibilities to meet our regulatory standards of service extremely seriously and are deeply disappointed to have failed them on this occasion.”
They added: “The cause was the availability of resources in key frontline roles compounded by a spike in cold weather in December 2022, which contributed to making a challenging situation worse. We have taken remedial steps to address this shortfall. Since 2023, our performance has returned to the high levels of performance that our customers expect.”
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A spokesperson for Cadent said: “Despite our best efforts, the unforecastable level of demand on our emergency services during December 2022 meant that we missed the overall annual standard of service for two of our networks during the 2022/2023 period … Since the incident, we have led an industry-wide review of the root causes to try to ensure that such a situation doesn’t arise again.
“We appreciate that some of our customers did not receive the level of service from us that they, and we, would expect during December 2022. To recognise this, in addition to the actions taken following the industry review, we have agreed to make a £1.5m voluntary payment to Ofgem’s energy redress fund.”
The money from the redress scheme will be used to fund projects supporting energy customers, particularly those deemed to be vulnerable by the energy regulator.
