Performance – communities

Our principal operations, delivering energy every second of every day, are critical to the functioning of the economies and communities we serve. The reliability of our energy networks is one of our highest priorities after safety.

We measure network reliability separately for each of our business areas. The table below represents our performance across all of our networks in terms of availability.  For both the UK and US networks we continued to maintain excellent reliablility.

Table: Network reliability

In the UK, to measure the degree to which our customers are satisfied with the service we provide, we report against targets set by Ofgem for our UK Electricity Transmission and UK Gas Transmission using customer satisfaction scores.

In the US, we now use the Customer Trust Advice survey metric for US Residential customers. This survey focuses on the services we provide and the overall satisfaction of the customer with National Grid, asking about the level of trust they have in our advice to make good energy decisions.

The table below summarises how we measure customer satisfaction and also shows our targets for each business area.

Table: Customer satisfaction

We support the communities in which we live and work, providing positive benefits and helping them to thrive. We do this by being responsible citizens, through employee volunteering and fundraising for good causes, investing in community organisations and providing community grants.

During 2018/19 we:

• invested over £54 million to support community initiatives and relationships across our operations¹.

• raised £226,000 for other charities and good causes and; announced a new fundraising partnership with youth, education and social action charity; City Year UK where we have committed to raise £150,000k by April 2020.

• awarded over £532,000 worth of grants to a variety of local community projects through our Community Grants Programme.

• continued to support our Power to Serve employee volunteering programme in the US, which promotes our stewardship and safety principles.
• worked with 36 local United Way chapters in communities across the US territory, providing total contributions of nearly $3 million per year; including employee pledges and ‘matching’ corporate donations.  
• completed over 41,461 quality interactions with young people on STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths).  We measure a quality interaction as being one that is greater than one hour in duration. 
• contributed £1.0bn total tax to the UK exchequer.

^1. The London Benchmarking Group methodology was again used to assess this overall community investment. In addition to our donations, financial support was provided for our Affordable Warmth programme and education programme, 

Total Community Contribution (£million)

Our employees have continued to volunteer in their local communities, giving their time, skills and enthusiasm to support a wide range of projects.

Our UK employees provided over 6,780 hours of voluntary support to community projects across the country and raised over £143,931 for good causes. In February 2019, we announced a new fundraising partnership with youth, education and social action charity; City Year UK, where we have committed to raise £150,000 by April 2020.  This will help the charity to recruit more Volunteer Mentors and to get their year of service formally recognised as an accredited programme.

We have continued to support our Power to Serve employee volunteering programme in the US, which promotes our stewardship and safety principles. It seeks to be involved in existing community service projects, as well as creating new volunteering experiences for our employees that will benefit our local communities.

In the US we also support United Way, which aims to create a future through partnerships and collaboration; where all children, youth and families achieve all they can, regardless of their background or circumstances. We work with 36 local United Way branches, providing total contributions of nearly $3 million per year, including employee pledges and matching corporate donations.

National Grid's UK and US employees and charity partners have given over 41,461 quality interactions of over one hour to young people, encouraging the development of the skills and capabilities needed to gain meaningful employment.  We focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects because not enough young people  are taking these subjects, presenting a recruitment challenge to engineering based companies like ourselves.

The Engineering UK report 2018 concluded that engineering companies are projected to need an additional 203,000 people with Level 3+ engineering skills every year, to meet demand through to 2024. There is considerable demand for engineering skills outside of industries traditionally deemed to be engineering.  Given the engineering talent currently coming out of the educational pipeline, it is estimated that there is an acute shortfall of engineering skills - and this will continue without concerted action.  To meet these challenges, we continue to promote engineering to parents and children as a modern, dynamic and desirable career with a great future. 

Our employees act as education ambassadors, volunteering their time for a range of activities; including STEM enrichment, careers education and work experience programmes. Many young people in the US start their journey into the energy industry through our Engineering Our Future programme and go on to join our Company.

More widely, we continue to support  our partnership with the Center for Energy Workforce Development on its ‘energy industry fundamentals’ and we work with veterans through the US Troops to Energy Jobs programme. This is designed to help veterans make the transition from military service to the energy/utility industry.

In the UK, 'EmployAbility – Let’s work together' is our employee-led supported internship programme for young people aged 17 to 25 with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). 

The programme aims to raise aspirations and significantly improve the likelihood of a young person with learning disabilities achieving paid employment, by the provision of supported work placements. Currently only 6% of people with learning disabilities are in paid employment in the UK. 

In 2018/19 we provided 13 placements at three of our office locations. We have achieved great results so far, with 68% of our supported interns going into paid employment. We want to encourage other businesses and SEND schools/colleges to work together to overcome the challenge of low-paid employment prospects for young people with learning disabilities.