“We want to care more for our customers and continually improve customer experience.”

Customer service

We are committed to providing excellent customer service. We measure our standard of residential customer service through the independent energywatch league tables, where we continue to demonstrate performance improvement, and through regular customer surveys. We took a major decision during 2005 to further improve the service we offer to customers by bringing in-house our metering activity so that it now operates for EDF Energy's retail customers.

Combined with our work on better billing, we are now able to ensure a smooth process from collection of meter readings to dispatch of accurate bills.

Service reliability

EDF Energy is the largest electricity distribution company in the UK, with approximately 20 million people reliant upon our networks. We measure the performance of our networks using two key measures, Customer Minutes Lost and Customer Interruptions.These two indicators are used by Ofgem as a guide to the level of service we provide to our Networks customers.

The charts show our performance on a comparable basis from 2002. It shows that our performance has improved, with losses and interruptions in all three of our network areas now lower than the 2005 Ofgem targets.

Major customers

In industrial and commercial energy sales, our Major Business section continued its track record of excellent performance in 2005. In a challenging market we sold more energy, to more customers, more profitably than in any previous year. We did this under one brand – EDF Energy. Independent energy market observers now consider EDF Energy to be the leading supplier of electricity by volume in the business-to-business electricity market.

2005 also saw our continued growth in our provision of energy services and infrastructure to a huge range of commercial, industrial and governmental clients. We offer a range of services including consultancy, projectdesign and financing, programme management, energy supply and skilled people to customers ranging from small businesses to CanaryWharf, the London Underground and the UK’s largest airports. We are the largest utility company operating in the UK Public Private Partnership (PPP) and Private Finance Initiative (PFI) markets.

Energy prices

We generate enough electricity to meet the demand of our residential customers, while we meet business customers' needs through purchasing on the energy market. Since January wholesale electricity and gas prices rose by 90% and 100% respectively and carbon prices have increased dramatically. This necessitated us to raise our tariffs twice in 2005, the first by 5.4% for electricity and 8.1% for gas, the second by 10.7% for electricity and 12% for gas. These were difficult decisions, as any price rise can affect customer retention and can push more households into fuel poverty. With this in mind, we therefore developed a number of specific products designed to ease the burden, including a fixed price product and a further extension to our price change exemption for our most vulnerable customers.

Fuel poverty

A household is defined as 'fuel poor' if it spends more than 10% of its available income to achieve an adequate heating regime. Tackling fuel poverty is one of our most important social responsibilities, and we have developed a sector-leading response. Using innovative modelling techniques, we have identified our fuel poor customers and targeted them with a number of initiatives from debt assistance to free installation of energy efficiency measures in their homes. Across our London Warm Zone we are working with a range of partners to improve housing quality, and to help our customers access government benefits, and reduce their energy bills.

Energy efficiency commitment

All suppliers have a regulatory requirement to deliver energy efficiencymeasures to domestic customers. This is the Energy Efficiency Commitment (EEC). We met our target of 5,956 GWh for the firstphase of the EEC (EEC1) which ran from 2002 to 2005. We are well on the way to achieving our EEC2 target which is roughly double the target set for EEC1.

Since the start of the Government-initiated programmes back in 1994 we have invested over £126 million, resulting in an energy saving of 18,749 GWh. This equates to the amount of energy it takes to power London for eight months.

Working with our customers who fall into debt

Customers having trouble paying their bills can find help and advice through a free pack from EDF Energy that provides them with information on a variety of payment options, energy efficiency advice and available grants, other helplines and relevant organisations, and useful tools to aid budget planning.

Customers can also call our helpline free on 0800 096 4062, where they can receive practical help and advice on the best course of action.