A56Delivery risk: RedGate: pending
Connect the power Britain needs
Existing action A56, assessed at the same scope.
Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
- Who and where
- Generation, storage and demand projects in the reformed (Gate 2) connection queue in Great Britain, and the households and firms that pay network costs. (from the action record) Jurisdiction: Great Britain.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 13.0–19.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Baseline: Ofgem approved the connections reform (Gate 2 firm queue) on 15 April 2025; NESO and the networks are issuing offers (Phase 1 deadline extended to 31 October 2026); Great British Grid was announced on 29 September 2026; industrial price relief (BICS) opens from April 2027. Enforcing the timetable and publishing time to connect as a regular measure is a UK Facts proposal, not government policy. (from the action record)
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Marginal change not yet defined
- Domain home: Energy
- In the national plan: Growth and prosperity list; Resilience and sustainability appraisal queue
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
Connection reform, new network assets and industrial bill relief operate through different mechanisms and timescales.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Separate a connection bottleneck from an industrial-price support scheme. For each, name eligible users, the existing settlement and the additional change.
- Test whether it works
- Energised capacity and usable connection dates for networks; additional viable production and energy efficiency for relief. Queue removals alone are not delivered capacity.
- Establish the cost
- Network capital, operations and financing plus any time-limited subsidy. Show incidence on taxpayers and other bill-payers and test expiry of support.
- Protect against harm
- Avoid subsidy commitments that depend on speculative future receipts or crowd out essential connections.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Connect the power Britain needs: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)3 of 3 — Severe harm across a broad population
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional problem-importance judgement from linked site pages; not the scale of achievable benefit.
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)2 of 3 — Specific material change to existing delivery
Reviewer’s reason: Separate queue management, network reinforcement and industrial levies; identify projects, kit, engineers and regulator decisions. A missing rating requires a defined marginal change.
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)1 of 3 — Indirect, mixed, modelled or weak causal support
Reviewer’s reason: Engineering need and queue evidence exist; the marginal effects of queue reform and industrial bill relief are different questions.
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Unknown unless a reasonably defined target-population benefit can be judged; no bonus merely for spanning domains.
Residual harms (Hm)1 of 3 — Material harm/unresolved mitigation
Reviewer’s reason: Binding specialist/kit constraints; moving charges to households; stranded assets.
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Capital and operating network costs, financing, bill incidence, relief duration and funding.
Delivery capacity (Ca)1 of 3 — Binding scarce resource
Reviewer’s reason: Separate queue management, network reinforcement and industrial levies; identify projects, kit, engineers and regulator decisions.
Distribution (Fa)2 of 3 — Mixed or broadly neutral with safeguards
Reviewer’s reason: Provisional distribution judgement for the stated target; verify who pays, who gains and excluded groups.
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)1 of 3 — More than three but less than ten years
Reviewer’s reason: First meaningful outcome, not announcement: Time to energisation, reliability and industrial costs; household bill impacts.
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Reviewer’s reason: Energy departments, system/network operators and regulators; Split infrastructure and bill-policy appraisal
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 13.0–19.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 12.7–18.2 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 14.5–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 14.4–17.8 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: RedReview’s claim: Red. Best the recorded evidence allows: Red.
Review’s reason: Binding specialist/kit constraints; moving charges to households; stranded assets.
Why it is not Green yet
- Delivery obstacle: Binding specialist/kit constraints; moving charges to households; stranded assets..
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending: incomplete appraisal”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established. Review: “Full incremental costing not established in reviewed material”.
Still to cost: Capital and operating network costs, financing, bill incidence, relief duration and funding.
Funding status: not identified.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: Energy departments, system/network operators and regulators (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: binding constraint.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- Ofgem (approves and enforces), the National Energy System Operator and network companies, with DESNZ (action record)
- Scotland:
- Ofgem (approves and enforces), the National Energy System Operator and network companies, with DESNZ (action record)
- Wales:
- Ofgem (approves and enforces), the National Energy System Operator and network companies, with DESNZ (action record)
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
The connections reform covers Great Britain (including Scottish transmission owners); Northern Ireland has its own system operator. The British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme covers Great Britain, with an equivalent scheme funded for Northern Ireland.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: None recorded.
Safeguards
None specified yet.
Risks and residual harms: Binding specialist/kit constraints; moving charges to households; stranded assets.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Time to energisation, reliability and industrial costs; household bill impacts.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Projects in the pre-2030 pipeline with connection offers: latest 58% (713 of 1,223; 37GW) (June 2026); baseline not published (Great Britain).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Time to energisation, reliability and industrial costs; household bill impacts.
Engineering need and queue evidence exist; the marginal effects of queue reform and industrial bill relief are different questions.
Review record
Assessment status: Provisional single-reviewer assessment; not an approved business case.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Scored in the working review of 6 October 2026 on the shared ten-criterion scale (one reviewer); not independently calibrated.
First 90 days (review): Produce a signed scope and current-delivery baseline; Separate queue management, network reinforcement and industrial levies; identify projects, kit, engineers and regulator decisions. Obtain incremental costs and an accountable decision before expansion.
Decision route: Split infrastructure and bill-policy appraisal
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.