The government's action plan to address the findings of NESO's
review into the incident at North Hyde Substation and commitment
to ensuring GB energy resilience now and in the future.
NESO's North Hyde report:
government response
Details
On Thursday 20 March 2025, a large fire broke out at North Hyde
Electricity Substation in Hayes, London and disrupted power
supply to over 70,000 customers and businesses. Though power was
restored within hours, secondary impacts to the aviation sector
due to the associated closure of Heathrow Airport continued to be
felt for days.
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
commissioned the National Energy System Operator (NESO) to undertake a
comprehensive review of the incident. The review was to identify
lessons and recommendations for the prevention, and management of
future power disruption events, and lessons for Great Britain's
energy resilience more broadly. NESO published their
review report on 2 July 2026.
The government response sets a clear implementation plan to make
progress against NESO's recommendations,
and sets out the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero's
commitment to improve GB
energy resilience through an Energy Resilience Strategy.
The implementation plan sets out actions to deliver improvements
across:
- resilience of energy infrastructure
- response and restoration of energy infrastructure
- enhancing the resilience of critical infrastructure to energy
disruption
The plan has been developed in collaboration with the Energy
Resilience Group (ERG). ERG is a partnership between
government, the regulator, and industry, which ensures a
joined-up approach to energy resilience, emergency response and
recovery across GB.
