Direction to NESO on Network Options Assessment and Centralised Strategic Network Plan methodology

What changed

Ofgem has directed NESO to move publication of the Network Options Assessment and the Electricity Ten Year Statement from January 2026 to June 2026, a five-month slip. The direction issued on 5 December 2025 under Independent System Operator and Planner Licence Conditions C13, C12 and C17 of the Electricity System Operator licence and C12 of the Gas System Planner licence. NESO had requested the changes; Ofgem approved them.

The stated reason is to give NESO time to fold Connections Reform into the refresh of the second transitional Centralised Strategic Network Plan (tCSNP2r). Two further decisions ride alongside the date move. First, the NOA for interconnectors is suspended outright, on the grounds that the forthcoming Strategic Spatial Energy Plan and the full Centralised Strategic Network Plan will identify interconnection opportunities strategically, and a parallel NOA process could produce conflicting results. Second, Ofgem has granted NESO additional time to publish the CSNP methodology, citing the CSNP's expanded scope: hydrogen networks and offshore connection design now sit inside it, and the CSNP cannot begin until the NOA process concludes.

What this means in practice

The NOA and ETYS are the inputs that justify transmission reinforcement spending. NOA recommends which network projects proceed; ETYS sets out the system need they answer. Moving them five months pushes back the evidence base that underpins funding decisions for the 2030s network build, the largest period of transmission investment in decades. This is the standard accuracy-versus-timeliness trade-off, made explicit in the direction. Incorporating Connections Reform means the recommendations reflect the queue that will actually exist rather than the one being dismantled, which raises the quality of the output. The cost is borne downstream: transmission owners, the projects waiting on reinforcement, and ultimately the connection dates of generation and demand that depend on that reinforcement all wait an extra five months for the signal. Delay is not neutral. A reinforcement decision in June rather than January is the same decision taken later, with the carrying cost falling on every project queued behind it.

Suspending the interconnector NOA is the more consequential structural change. Until now, an interconnector developer could look to the NOA for a regulatory read on whether a given link fitted system need. That signal is now withdrawn until the SSEP and CSNP produce a strategic view of interconnection. In the interim there is no published assessment process for interconnector need. Developers are told, in effect, to wait for the strategic plan. For projects with long lead times and capital already committed, an indefinite gap in the regulatory signal is a real cost, even if the eventual strategic treatment is more coherent than the project-by-project NOA it replaces. The justification, avoiding conflicting results between a tactical NOA and a strategic CSNP, is sound on its own terms; the unpriced cost is the option value lost while developers hold position with no assessment to point to.

The CSNP methodology delay compounds the sequencing. The CSNP cannot start until the NOA concludes, the NOA now concludes in June rather than January, and the methodology itself needs more time because hydrogen and offshore design have been pulled into scope. Each dependency stacks on the last. The expansion of CSNP scope is a deliberate move toward a single integrated plan covering electricity, gas, hydrogen and offshore, which is the right architecture for a system where these networks increasingly interact. But integration on this scale lengthens the critical path, and the network build it is meant to coordinate is already the binding constraint on connection dates.

What happens next

NOA and ETYS publish in June 2026, against a previous deadline of 31 January 2026 set in the earlier direction allowing the methodology submission by 31 March 2025. The CSNP process begins only after the NOA concludes, so the CSNP timeline now flows from June 2026 rather than January. NESO has additional time, not yet a fixed date in the public direction, to publish the CSNP methodology; that methodology is the next document to watch, because it will define how hydrogen networks and offshore connection design are assessed within a single strategic plan.

The interconnector NOA stays suspended until the SSEP and CSNP provide a strategic interconnection view. There is no published reinstatement date. Interconnector developers should track SSEP and CSNP milestones rather than the NOA cycle, since that is now where interconnection need will be determined. The three subsidiary documents (the main direction, the NESO CSNP methodology direction request, and the NESO NOA-tCSNP2 Refresh direction request) set out the licence mechanics; the operative dates and the scope of the suspension are in the main direction. The substantive question for the next year is whether the integrated CSNP, with its wider scope and longer critical path, delivers the network coordination it promises faster than the project-by-project process it replaces would have, or whether the sequencing dependencies turn a five-month slip into a structural lag in the 2030s build programme.