With approximately 95% of our charges being recovered from those we regulate, transparency and accuracy are vital, and we want to ensure our stakeholders have confidence and trust in us to get things right. Only by understanding and listening to the issues and concerns of the industry can we seek to address them, so we recently hosted two seminars to provide finance leads from industry with a greater understanding of our charging methodology.
The seminars, held in London and Birmingham and led by Sarah High, our Finance Director, outlined our charging powers, methodology and drive to become more efficient and transparent in how we charge the industry. The events also covered our approach to enabling regulation and how industry can support us to improve planning and forecasting.
You told us in our stakeholder survey that you wanted greater clarity about how we charge, so we introduced our new charging booklet at the seminars, which explains how our charging works, what our end-to-end process looks like, and how our costs are defined. We hope the new guide, together with our seminar programme are starting to answer those questions.
Feedback following the two events has been positive – delegates told us that the sessions were ‘worthwhile’, with comments including:
“Fantastic that ONR is being so open, engaging with the nuclear estate.”
“Good to put faces to people I have spoken to on the phone and to understand how ONR is improving forecasting.”
“Good seminar for me, pitched at the right level. It was useful to understand the constraints (financially) that feed the recovery model.”
We were pleased at how well the sessions were received, and we intend to make these more regular in the future. In the meantime, feedback and comments about our approach would be most welcome via contact@onr.gov.uk