Happy New Year and welcome to our first newsletter of 2023. Alongside our core operations, January always sees the culmination of our planning activities with the publication of our Strategy and Forward Work Plan. This year, it was swiftly followed by the release of our Theft Estimation Methodology report which informs the work we plan to undertake in helping to tackle theft together.
Our Strategy and Forward Work Plan sets out our planned activity for 2023-2026. We have three main priorities: the delivery and evolution of REC services, continuing to develop REC policy and the delivery of our major programmes which are Data and Digitalisation, Energy Theft Reduction and our contribution to the Market Half Hourly Settlement Programme. We would like to thank those who attended our webinar on 25th January and who have already provided feedback. If you couldn’t participate live, you can still watch the recording here. On page 3 of this newsletter, you’ll also find an article summarising the essential information.
We commissioned Capgemini to produce a Theft Estimation Methodology, providing what we believe to be the first evidence-based assessment of the scale of theft across Great Britain since Ofgem’s impact assessment around ten years ago. Based upon all relevant data available to us, the final report estimates that theft of gas and electricity amounts to a value at current prices of up to £ 1.4 billion yearly. Please turn to page 5 to read all about this project, some of the challenges in accessing relevant data, and how this will allow us to reduce energy theft in the future. It’s been a big month for theft reduction in the industry – Stay Energy Safe, run by Crimestoppers, launched their latest video campaign, and the ‘Tick Tock’ radio campaign continues. Our figures show that more than 250,000 energy theft cases go unreported annually – turn to page 4 to learn more about the campaign.
This month, we took the opportunity to refresh our branding and website to make them more compatible with our aspirations at RECCo of being more digital, collaborative, responsive, timely and efficient. We hope you like the changes to our website which are designed to make it more live, prioritising user experience and simplicity, while continuing to meet your needs for information updates about our programmes, services, and latest activity. If you haven’t yet, you can browse here. Please do provide us with any feedback.
Finally, on the last page of this newsletter, you’ll find some dates for your diary. I’d encourage you to join our Annual Budget webinar on March 1st, an important event for all stakeholders. You can register your interest here.
Thank you for reading this latest edition. We look forward to working with you throughout the rest of 2023 to improve the retail energy market. Please do take some time to provide us with feedback.
