Consultation on the publication of Utility Regulation compliance and enforcement annual report

A fundamental function of our regulation activity is the ongoing monitoring of regulated companies’ compliance with the licence obligations under which they operate. It is common practice for regulators to report publicly on the compliance and enforcement activity they have undertaken throughout the year alongside the annual compliance record of the licensees they regulate.

As such we have developed and are proposing to implement an external reporting framework that provides insights into the compliance monitoring and enforcement activity we have undertaken across the previous calendar year. 

We are seeking stakeholders’ views on certain aspects of our external Compliance and Enforcement Annual Report to ensure the content of the report is fit for purpose and enhances wider market understanding and development, including:

• the relevant compliance data for inclusion within the report to ensure value to the reader; 
• the extent to which it would be necessary or desirable to have the data anonymised / pseudonymised and inclusion by licence type; and
• whether cases closed at the Initial Enquiry Stage through an agreed alternative resolution should be published in our Compliance and Enforcement Annual Report. 

Following closure of the consultation period by 5pm on Tuesday 8 September 2026, we will analyse all consultation responses received and use this as the basis for our decision paper. We hope to publish our decision paper and our first Compliance and Enforcement Annual Report in October 2026 and annually thereafter.

Additional information:

• Your response may be made public by the Utility Regulator. If you do not want all or part of your response or name made public, please state this clearly in the response by marking your response as ‘CONFIDENTIAL’.

• If you want other information that you provide to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, there is a statutory Code of Practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, amongst other things, with obligations of confidence. In view of this, it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential.

• Information provided in response to this consultation, including personal information, may be subject to publication or disclosure in accordance with the access to information regimes (these are primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 2018).

• As stated in the GDPR Privacy Statement for consumers and stakeholders, any personal data contained within your response will be deleted once the matter being consulted on has been concluded, though the substance of the response may be retained. 

Ways to respond