Is grid connections reform finally fixing Britain’s queue problem?

With hundreds of gigawatts removed from the connections queue and viable projects being brought forward, Laura Henry, Director of Regulation, Policy and External Affairs at Eclipse Power, explores what the reforms mean for those still trying to get connected.

For much of the last decade, grid connections in Great Britain have been defined by a fast-growing queue. As the situation worsened, the type of projects that once connected in under a year could find themselves waiting for the better part of a decade, stuck in a pipeline that had long outgrown the process built to handle it.

Over the last four years, connections reform under the CMP434 and CMP435 Code Modifications has been the response from the National Energy System Operator (NESO) – the most significant overhaul of the process in a generation.

The standard queue approach that connections reform replaces was written for a different era, when NESO might have seen only a handful of large applications a year. As the energy transition has accelerated, the queue has lengthened, and viable, ready-to-build projects have found themselves sitting behind speculative ones with no realistic route to delivery.

The purpose of these reforms – which have focused on generation and transmission-connected demand only – is to sort the queue by deliverability rather than by application date: a shift from first come, first served to first ready and needed, first connected.

The transmission queue was on a path where new connection offer dates for generation and demand were extending late into the 2030s. However, the reforms have reduced the volume of projects occupying the queue by more than 300 GW and, with it, have brought forward average connection dates by six years for those projects that are able to advance.

Now that the first offers under the reformed process are going out, what does this actually change for a project trying to get connected?

The shift to readiness

One of the main filters that’s been used to refine the lengthy connections queue is the introduction of a readiness test. This determines whether a project is genuinely progressing – for example, whether land rights are secured and planning is advancing.

This is good news for developers who have done that groundwork: in theory, it should have cleared out any projects ahead of them that weren’t realistically able to be built in the same timeframe.

Alongside this are the existing milestones that projects must meet for their application to progress. Missing these carries consequences through the Queue Management mechanism.

New Code Modifications add to the existing queue management processes. Under CMP448, for example, NESO can optionally activate a progression commitment fee for projects that have accepted a Gate 2 contract but haven’t reached the M1 milestone. It will apply the fee once a cumulative 6.5 GW of ‘stalled’ capacity leaves the queue.

The fee is a security that generation developers post – it’s calculated by MW allocated, and the cost increases every six months, so effectively, the longer you’re in the queue, the bigger the security you have to provide.

This is another reason why project developers must properly plan their supply chain, financing and internal approvals from the outset. A milestone missed for want of preparation is now a materially more expensive mistake than it once was.

The logic of these reforms is sound: higher commitments deter speculative applications or the oversubscription of a specific technology, and the securities fall away once a project connects.

However, there is a disproportionate consequence for smaller developers. Larger, well-capitalised businesses can absorb these costs, but this is harder for developers at the smaller end of the market. For this reason, it’s vital they’re factored into the financing from the outset.

Smaller developers have not been wholly without benefit, however. CMP446 has increased the threshold at which a transmission impact assessment is triggered.

By raising it from 1 MW to 5 MW for export capacity connected to local distribution networks, the amendment gives projects such as small-scale renewables, battery storage and community energy projects several in-principle benefits, including faster energisation dates and the elimination of transmission reinforcement liability costs.

Considering accountability

One issue that supply-side connections reform hasn’t yet fully resolved is the balance of accountability when dates slip.

A customer who misses a milestone can face significant consequences, up to and including the loss of their place in the queue. Yet when a network operator moves a connection date, the customer has far less recourse, despite the often severe commercial impacts.

This asymmetry of risk is now firmly on the agenda and is being examined under the Connections Process End-to-End Review. Ofgem is minded to strengthen the Guaranteed Standards of Performance regime for distribution network operators (DNOs) and transmission owners, and to explore damages where target energisation dates are missed.

In addition to connections reform, it’s long been clear within the industry that we also need a process to address demand-side projects, for which the queue is following much the same path of oversubscription and speculation.

The demand queue grew from 41 GW in November 2024 to 125 GW in June 2025; 80 GW of that demand has been driven by data centre projects, of which a large share are speculative.

Ofgem is now looking to address this through its Demand Connections Reform programme, launched via a Call for Input in February 2026.

Led also by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the three-pillar framework is designed to address the rapid influx of speculative demand-side applications and align assigned capacity with strategic UK policy and growth aims.

Its first pillar – Curate – focuses on tighter financial and readiness tests aimed at filtering out speculative applications. The Plan and Connect pillars ensure strategic demand projects, such as EV charging hubs or data centres within AI Growth Zones, are prioritised and expedited through alternative routes to construction.

In short, the demand side is now following the same reform path the supply side has just travelled. There are active workgroups and regular consultations for each of the pillars.

A call for realistic contingency

Taking all this into account, it’s clear that the date of a connection offer shouldn’t be treated as a guarantee. Early project planning and an understanding of industry change are becoming increasingly important.

The pace of change around grid connections is as remarkable as the demands being put on the system by today’s generation, storage, residential, commercial and data centre projects.

That makes an up-to-date understanding of the connections process increasingly important – not only the changes that have already been made, but the growing number of further reforms in the pipeline.

For developers, that means doing the groundwork on land rights and planning, understanding whether a technology type is regionally oversubscribed, meeting milestone dates and factoring the cost of securities into the financing case from the start.

Get those elements right, and the reforms should be better placed to achieve what they were designed to do: move viable, deliverable projects through the connections process.