SSE has today published its Annual Report and Accounts for the financial year ending 31 March 2014.
The report sets out how SSE has worked to meet the needs of customers, including its industry-leading price freeze and the response of the Networks business to a number of severe storms over the winter.
In the report SSE’s Chairman, Lord Smith of Kelvin, talks about some of the challenges faced and the how SSE will approach the next financial year:
“SSE’s decision to freeze until at least January 2016 household electricity and gas prices in Great Britain was a practical response to the concerns of customers and the politicians they elect. The price freeze also provides SSE with an opportunity to work constructively with legislators, regulators, consumer bodies and other stakeholders to secure practical changes that will benefit energy bill payers now and in the future.
“The announcement by Ofgem of a referral of the energy market in Great Britain to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) should also be seen as an opportunity. Many of the key features of the energy market have become politically contentious and been subject to significant change designed to achieve a mixture of objectives. SSE has demonstrated consistently its appetite for reform that is in the interests of customers and believes that a market reference should provide a platform for achieving greater political and regulatory stability for the GB energy market, for the benefit of customers and investors.
“Meeting the needs of customers has presented significant challenges over the past year. In particular, the severe late autumn and winter weather put SSE’s electricity networks under unprecedented strain and caused networks customers to be without electricity more often and for longer than would normally be expected. We have carried out a wide-ranging consultation to see what we can do better in the future, but in the meantime I have no doubt that our engineers and support teams did an outstanding job in difficult conditions.”
SSE’s AGM will take place on Thursday, 17 July, in Perth. All relevant AGM documents will be mailed to shareholders. Online copies of the Annual Report are available to download in the investor section of sse.com.