Forward Plan

National Grid ESO publishes a Forward Plan each year that describes what we’re planning to do to create value for our customers, stakeholders and energy consumers.

This allows them to hold us to account for delivery and enhances our levels of transparency, engagement and accountability

Our Forward Plan helps you understand what we aim to deliver over the course of a financial year, by setting out our ambitious plan of deliverables.

It also shows the metrics we will use to measure our performance during the year, and how our activities this year fit into the bigger picture of the energy transition.

The Forward Plan sets out our activities under three role areas:

Control centre operations
Market development and transactions
System insight, planning and network development

Our Forward Plan 2020-21 sets out our immediate steps until the start of RIIO-2 to achieve our ambitions.

Developed in collaboration with the energy industry

In December 2019 we consulted on a draft Forward Plan for 2020-21.

It provides an updated set of activities and performance measures for the 2020-21 financial year, and gives our best view of what we will deliver during the year.

Stakeholders have given us feedback on this draft plan.

We've taken on board this feedback and incorporated this into the final version.

Historical documents

Here you can download previous Forward Plan documents and information that provides more context around our activities.

Forward Plan 2018-19

We published the final version of our first ESO Forward Plan in March 2018.

It’s an ambitious plan, outlining the activities and outputs we’ll deliver for 2018-19 to realise value for our customers, stakeholders and energy consumers.

The plan also allows them to hold us to account for delivery. 

ESO Forward Plan 2018/19

ESO Delivery Schedule

ESO Performance Metrics Definition

ESO Stakeholder Engagement Report

ESO Glossary of Key Terms

ESO Principle 4 Relaunch

ESO Principle 5 Update

ESO Principle 6 Update

ESO response to Call for input 18-21

Mid-year panel session slides