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Performance during the year
Relationships
Customer service
We continue to aim for improvements in the service we provide to our customers and customer service is high on the agenda for the management teams in each of our businesses. In addition, we are supporting our businesses through the establishment of shared services functions in the UK and the US and by seeking to improve information systems.
Our main area of concern relates to Electricity Distribution in the US, where customer satisfaction has been affected by high commodity prices, which are outside of our control, but also by reliability and service quality issues. As described in Performance, Reliability and Reliability enhancement programme , our reliability enhancement programme is designed to address many of these issues.
Regulatory relationships
In the UK, we continue to work very closely with Ofgem on the renewal of our electricity and gas transmission and gas distribution networks, and in expanding those networks to meet new and changing demand. In addition, we seek to maintain a professional approach with Ofgem in areas where we disagree, in particular with respect to their investigation into metering services in the UK.
In the US, we have differing relationships with FERC and state regulators and there is much we need to do to improve, particularly in respect of New York, where our reliability enhancement programme is targeted on improving customer satisfaction, and hence we hope, our relationships with our regulators. We believe our response to the storms in October 2006 in upstate New York demonstrates how we can deliver.
Suppliers
We continue to make progress in improving the quality of our relationships with suppliers. A particular focus has been in the UK, where we have worked with a number of suppliers to create alliances where we work in combined teams to deliver on construction projects in Transmission - UK and Gas Distribution - UK and where we and suppliers share in the financial risk associated with these projects.
Community investment
Our policy on community investment provides a framework for ensuring that investment delivers benefits for our business and the communities we serve. During the year, we reviewed our social policy to ensure our approach to community investment remains relevant to, and supports, society's wider social and environmental priorities. This review has included analysis of existing activities and best practice, both across National Grid and externally. We continue to use the model developed by the London Benchmarking Group to provide a framework for measuring and reporting our community investment contributions, by capturing, in accordance with the model, spend against our key themes. On this basis, we invested some £9 million in support of community initiatives and relationships across our operations in 2006/07.
In our 2006 employee opinion survey, 68% (2004: 63%) of respondents considered National Grid makes a positive contribution to the communities in which we operate.