Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 20TH - 26TH MARCH 2020 | 3 This week 4 | Seven days Coronavirus special 6 | Inside story Our Mind the Tap campaign 7 | Interview Luke Pollard laments Environment Bill's missed opportunity 8 Policy & Regulation 8 | News Price control reviews to be reopened for net-zero needs 10 | Analysis Coronavirus consequences 11 | Opinion The challenges and opportunities of levelling up Britain 12 | Analysis The Budget 15 Finance & Investment 15 | News UKPN unleashes open data 16 | Analysis Unravelling the stockmarket rout 20 Operations & Assets 20 | High viz Dewsbury sewage treatment works 21 | Market view Renewables crank up the risk and complexity challenges 22 | Event The changing face of cyber- security and systems resilience 26 | Interview Unite's Peter McIntosh on keeping the lights on and taps running 27 Customers 27 | News River restoration work woefully inadequate 29 | Market view C-suite conversation must move on from consolidation to the customer of the future 30 Community 31 | Disconnector Knowledge worth Keeping Subscribers to Utility Week can access premium content and exclusive research, available to read online or as downloadable documents. http://www.utilityweek.co.uk/ Leader Suzanne Heneghan Resilience verus the Coronavirus Within just a month Coronavirus has soared to the top of the world's lexicon, but for lifeline businesses like utilities 'resilience' is now running a close second. As the UK grapples with this week's new dramatic lockdown measures to curb the march of Covid-19, every company in the country is escalating its contingency plans. But for companies charged with care of critical national infrastructure and with duties to protect the vulnerable in society, the effectiveness of such strategies holds a great deal in the balance. In this issue of Utility Week – and for the coming weeks and months we now understand this crisis could run for – we will shine a light on the actions utilities are taking to protect security of supply, maintain safe operations and support vulnerable consumers. We will also explore the potential need for flexibility in existing regulatory and policy frameworks to ensure utilities can put all the necessary resource into sustaining resilience during these extraordinary times. And we will consider the longer-term impact the Covid-19 outbreak could have on critical industry and public interests, from climate change to the social contract. This week, key insights come from United Utilities, whose "well-rehearsed" pandemic response is now being enacted for the first time (see news, p5). We also hear from an anonymous DNO director who has urgently called for swi‹ regulatory clarity about the emerging logistical challenges for management and employees that are arising from Coronavirus and which may fall outside of current licence conditions or government advice (see news, p4, and our interview with Unite's Peter McIntosh, p26). Meanwhile, our report from a recent meeting of cyber-security leaders shows a prescient appreciation among this community of the stresses and strains involved in operating under "war time" conditions. Just three days before the country found itself transfixed by a full-scale Coronavirus emergency, our group of cyber experts agreed that organisational and cyber-resilience are inextricably intertwined and becoming more complex in increasingly automated and decentralised infrastructure and service networks. Less than a month on, their advice now carries extra resonance. Suzanne Heneghan, editor, suzanneheneghan@fav-house.com COVER STORY 22 | Event Cyber-resilience and the utility sector ENVIRONMENT BILL 7 | A missed opportunity ANALYSIS 16 | Inside the stockmarket rout Advanced: Be utterly predictable. Because letting people down isn't an option https://bit.ly/2wnAxKU See the Community section, page 30 HIGH VIZ 20 | Dewsbury digesters' domes FTSE 100 YTD 5000 6000 7000 8000

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