Our achievements

We are delighted to have been named a top UK employer - with the best leader too!

The company came 2nd in the Top 25 Best Big Companies to Work for List, as decided by anonymous feedback from staff. Basil Scarsella, chief executive, was also awarded a special award for Best Leader and UK Power Networks was named Best Improver, by Best Companies.

We were also ranked second in the utilities sector list and regionally, came 3rd across the best big companies in London, 7th in the East of England and 11th in the South East.

We won the Customer Experience Award at the Utility Week Awards, where judges were impressed by how we uses data-driven techniques to drive better decision making about customer service, and new ways to continuously improve. On average, customers score us 9.4/10 when surveyed.

Our ‘Power Among Us’ programme won Best ESG Strategy at the HR Excellence Awards. It’s one of a series of initiatives which give out-of-work young people from disadvantaged backgrounds a foot in the door of the energy industry.

Investing in employee training and development led to us winning the top accolade at the 2024 Investors in People Awards.

The ceremony in London saw us collect the top award for Employer of the Year (Platinum >250 employees) – jointly with the Chartered Management Institute. 

We had also been shortlisted for social responsibility, best apprenticeship programme, employee engagement, and health and wellbeing.

The UK National Contact Centre Awards rewarded our customer care team with a Silver Award in Best Approach to Supporting Vulnerable Customers, and Abbie Harper won the Bronze Award for Quality Manager of the Year.

The award followed trials of portable battery packs to power medical feed pumps, and judges liked that we give people the option to video-call – which is particularly helpful for some of the 2.2 million customers on our Priority Services Register who may need extra support.

We achieved recognition at the inaugural Utility Week Live Flex Awards, winning both the prestigious Flexibility Pioneer of the Year (Sotiris Georgiopoulos) and Network of the Year awards. These accolades underscore our commitment to innovation and excellence in delivering a smarter, more flexible energy network.

UK Power Networks’ Local Net Zero team has been recognised for its collaboration with local authorities by winning the Energy Institute’s International Energy Engagement Award. The team of eight, which launched under the company’s Distribution System Operator (DSO) last year, gives local authorities a dedicated service to help turn their decarbonisation plans into reality.

We were named Utility of the Year, and also won the Digital Transformation Award at the Utility Week Awards.
Judges praised our employees’ collaborative efforts to unlock new ways of working, and our smart connections portal. We have been a repeat finalist for Utility of the Year every year since 2017 (after previously winning the title in 2012, 2015, and 2016).

Our company is in the top five per cent globally to be awarded Investors in People’s Platinum status and won the Award for Leadership and Management at Investors in People’s annual business and HR awards. In the same month we also picked up a prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from Best Companies.

In March 2023 we won the Best Customer Feedback Strategy Award at the UK Customer Satisfaction Awards. These are run by the Institute of Customer Service and attract top companies which are household names so result in stiff competition.

Our contact centre was voted best Large Contact Centre of the Year, and the first ever company to win Leadership Team of the Year at the UK National Contact Centre Awards in June 2023. UK Power Networks beat household names like the RAC, BT and Vodaphone to the titles, in recognition of the fantastic team of 325 staff based in Ipswich, Suffolk who answer calls 24/7 for 365 days of the year, to help people with power issues.

Innovative enhancements to our website won the Jury’s Choice Award, at the international Umbraco Awards in Denmark in June.

The international award was presented to design agency Tangent, for their work on our website in the past year.

We became Britain's Most Admired Company for the Energy Distribution and Supply sector for 2022, in April 2023.

The Britain's Most Admired Companies study has been running for 33 years. The annual benchmark asks C-suite business leaders, financial analysts, journalists, and commentators to rate companies in their sector. Companies are rated based on a set of 13 criteria, including Quality of Products and Services, Financial Soundness, and Environment, Social and Governance (ESG).

We achieved second overall in the Top 25 Best Big Companies to Work For List, number 1 in Utilities and number 3 in London.

This was based on over 3,000 employee surveys in which staff revealed high levels of pride in their work, a sense of family and teamwork and job security.

UK Power Networks is the UK’s leading utility in Smart Grids. Singapore-based SP Group, which produces the annual Smart Grid Index, also placed UK Power Networks #2 in Europe and #2 worldwide, in its study of 94 utilities across 39 countries in 2022.

The Smart Grid Index measures the smartness of power grids across seven key dimensions: customer empowerment and satisfaction, monitoring and control, data analytics, supply reliability, green energy, security, and Distributed Energy Resources integration. UK Power Networks has been ranked first in the world, Europe, and UK since the study began in 2018.

Our project to replace three giant electrical transformers under London’s Leicester Square, won the Capital Project of the Year Award at the prestigious Utility Week Awards 2022.

This project was successfully achieved in two years not three as originally planned, below budget, and enhanced community liaison to keep this busy area running smoothly during the work. The investment has given Theatreland increased resilience and energy capacity for decades to come.

Our contact centre picked up a host of awards in November 2022, including international acclaim in the European Contact Centre Awards when they judged us Best Large Contact Centre of the Year and award a silver medal for Most Effective Management of Peak Demand (joint with partner Instinctif). At the UK Contact Centre Awards the team scooped a trio of awards for Best Customer Experience, Large Contact Centre of the Year and Employee Engagement Strategy of the Year. 

In July 2022 we were named top customer service provider in the UK Customer Service Index, beating many household names in the process.

Top industry accolades came in the form of Energy and Utilities Project of the Year Award at the National Technology awards, Major Project of the Year at the National Sustainability Awards, and Public Engagement Awards at the Energy Institute Awards.

At the Better Society Awards in May 2022, we won the Environment Award and Best Carbon Reduction/Offset Programme of the Year.

UK Power Networks’ caring approach for its employees won it the title of Employer of the Year at the Utility Week Awards 2021, held in March 2022.

Judges praised the way the company had invested in employees, protected their wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic and championed equality, diversity and inclusion.

In January 2022 we were ranked number 4 in the UK Customer Satisfaction Index’s Top 50, and rated the best company in the UK for complaint handling and ethics. 

This independent survey includes household names like John Lewis (number 7), Amazon (21), Octopus (32), and Pets at Home which came first.

We achieved our highest ranking of 6th place on the 2021 Best Big Companies to Work For list. We have been ranked on the list which is produced by Best Companies based on employee surveys for the past seven years.

In 2021 we secured second place on Best Companies’ new Utilities’ sector Top 10 list, and on three regional lists including the Top Five Best Big Companies to work for in London.

UK Power Networks receives the Investors in People Platinum Award. This is an international standard awarded to just 1% of IiP-recognised organisations, showing that policies and practices around supporting employees are embedded throughout the business.

We also won the Discovering Potential Award for commitment to recruiting and developing employees.

Growing a new energy market which will benefit consumers, the environment and industry, won UK Power Networks the Disruptor Award at the Utility Week Awards. The company is growing the energy flexibility market for a low carbon future, making it more economical to use more low carbon energy and transport it to the electricity network. Flexibility represents a fundamental shift in how electricity networks operate. In just three years the company has helped grow this market from nothing to more than 120MW, worth £14million.

UK Power Networks demonstrated exceptional procurement delivery, to confirm its position within an elite worldwide group who have gained the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) Corporate Certification advanced ‘Platinum’ award. It is one of only four organisations worldwide who have ever been awarded full marks across all 28 areas of the assessment.

In July 2020 UK Power Networks was named ‘Network Of The Year’ at the Network Awards, for its industry-leading performance throughout 2019. The company was nominated in six further categories and also won Stakeholder Engagement Initiative Of The Year for its team’s work on the 'Lifting Families out of Fuel Poverty' project.

Reducing emissions and engaging with staff and customers about lowering their carbon emissions, led UK Power Networks to become the first network operator to achieve the coveted Carbon Trust Standard for Carbon. Achieving certification in 2020 was a key step in the company’s Green Action Plan, as it seeks to minimise its impact on the environment and help communities reach ‘net zero’ in line with the UK government’s target of net zero emissions. The Carbon Trust’s Standard for Carbon is the world’s leading independent certification of an organisation’s achievements in managing and reducing its CO2e (greenhouse gas) emissions, recognising organisations that achieve year-on-year reductions.

Delivering quick and efficient roadworks across London earned us two top industry awards from the City of London’s Considerate Contractor Streetworks Scheme; a Gold Award for overall roadworks performance, and London streetworks manager Colin Smith won the Outstanding Individual Achievement Award.

In 2021 UK Power Networks which became the first distribution network operator to partner with the Levelling Up Goals initiative by former Secretary of State for Education, Rt Hon Justine Greening. The twin challenges of the economic recovery post-Covid and the UK’s acceleration towards net zero open up a new era for utilities taking greater responsibility for social mobility, by going above and beyond what people might expect. Levelling Up provides a clear benchmark, as the company plays its part in UK efforts to tackle social mobility, to make sure everyone has the same access and opportunities in life.

Work to recruit and retain a diverse workforce helped earn UK Power Networks a national accreditation, recognising best practice on equality, diversity and inclusion. Back in 2018 the company was the UK’s first electricity distributor to be awarded the National Equality Standard (NES), and it was re-accredited in 2020. It is also rated #3 in the Top 50 Inclusive Companies.