How to automate GSOP reporting for a gas network

Guaranteed Standards of Performance, or GSOP, are Ofgem's statutory service standards for gas distribution networks. When a network misses a standard, the affected customer is owed a fixed automatic compensation payment, with no claim required.

That is a different problem from the consumer explainers that usually answer GSOP searches. A network team has to prove which standards were breached, how much each customer is owed, whether the payment was made on time, and whether the annual return can be defended. Useful automation starts there: evidence captured during the work, matched to the right property, checked consistently, and escalated to a person when the record is incomplete or contradictory.

1. Tracking interruptions

For GS1, the supply-restoration standard, the network has 24 hours to restore supply after an unplanned interruption. If it misses that standard, it pays £75 for a domestic property and £125 for a small non-domestic property. The same amount is owed again for every further complete 24 hours off gas, with no cap.

A job-level record is too blunt for that decision. A mains job on one street can restore in phases: one end may be back on supply while another set of homes is still waiting for access, purge and relight, or follow-up work. If the operational system only records the overall job as restored, it hides which properties crossed the 24-hour threshold. Rebuilding that later from engineer notes, call logs and work management updates turns a statutory payment decision into a reconstruction exercise. The case needs gas-off and gas-on at property level while the event is live, because the calculation depends on each property's off-gas duration.

2. Collecting the evidence

Validating one GSOP case by hand is rarely one lookup. Restoration timestamps may be in an operational or telemetry system. The planned-interruption notice and send date may sit in a letters platform, a customer system, a works planning tool, or a scanned record. Site forms and photos may be in a field app. Customer notes may sit with the contact centre. Priority Services Register status may live in another customer or vulnerability system, and it can change duties such as alternative heating and cooking within four hours and faster reinstatement.

That spread of evidence is why manual validation becomes slow and uneven. A GSOP administrator has to check restoration, notice, field evidence, customer notes and vulnerability status before deciding the case. Each lookup creates a chance to miss a record or use the wrong property's evidence.

Planned work shows why the property-level evidence matters. GS13 requires at least seven working days' notice before a planned interruption. If the network misses that standard, the payment is £50 for a domestic customer and £125 for a non-domestic customer. The case needs to show that the right property was notified and that the notice went out early enough. If the send date is buried in a separate correspondence system, the validation team has to find and interpret it before it can decide the case.

The useful system design is a case file per property, assembled automatically from the systems where the work actually happens. The gas networks industry page gives the wider operating context for distribution networks, but GSOP automation has to work at this narrower level: the property, the relevant standard, and the evidence that proves the decision.

3. Deciding which cases need human judgement

Most GSOP cases are not close calls, and those are the cases automation should remove from the validation team's queue. If supply is confirmed back on at a domestic property 31 hours after an unplanned interruption, and the restoration timestamp matches the property record, the network has an unambiguous GS1 breach: the 24-hour supply-restoration standard was missed, the £75 payment can be priced, and the case can be queued without a person keying it by hand. Clear passes work the same way. A rules check can apply the standard, record the reason, preserve the evidence used, and leave the validation team time for the cases where the record is genuinely unclear.

That judgement is needed when the restoration timestamp is missing, two systems disagree on when the planned-interruption notice went out, or the vulnerability flag is ambiguous. These are cases where a person has to decide what the network can actually prove. If doubtful cases are decided automatically, the network either pays people who were never owed compensation, or refuses people who were owed it and cannot defend the decision later.

4. Calculating and paying compensation

Once the evidence is settled, the amount should follow the standard. GS1 pays £75 for a domestic property and £125 for a small non-domestic property when supply is not restored within 24 hours, then repeats the same amount for each further complete 24-hour period off gas. GS13 is a one-off payment for a missed planned-interruption notice: £50 for a domestic customer and £125 for a non-domestic customer.

The next operational risk is timing. GS12 requires the network to pay GSOP compensation within ten working days of the compensation falling due. If it misses that payment deadline, a further £50 is owed. A slow payment process can therefore turn one service-standard breach into a second payment obligation, even where the original validation decision was correct.

That is why the decided case should produce the payment instruction directly. Re-keying decisions into a payment system adds delay and a new source of error: the wrong customer, property, standard, amount, or due date. A clean payment instruction should carry those fields and feed the payment result back into the case, so the annual return shows both what was owed and what was paid.

5. Managing the annual return

Gas distribution networks report GSOP performance to Ofgem each year through the regulatory reporting pack and the Regulatory Instructions and Guidance. If GSOP has been run as a year-end reporting exercise, the team has to rebuild the story from spreadsheets, payment files, field notes and customer records. That is slow, and it is weakest where an assurance team is likely to ask for detail.

The stronger model is to make the annual return an aggregation of cases already decided. Each case should hold the property, the relevant standard, the evidence used, the decision, the payment amount, the payment date, and any human judgement applied. When Ofgem, an auditor, or an internal assurance team asks why a case was paid or passed, the answer should be visible in the record.

The enforcement context makes that discipline worth the effort. In August 2024, Cadent, SGN Scotland and SGN Southern paid a combined £8m into the Energy Industry Voluntary Redress Fund after missing D10 emergency-attendance targets in 2022/23. That standard sits beside GSOP rather than inside the per-customer payment regime.

RIIO-GD3 also raises the reporting bar. The 2026-2031 gas distribution price control brings tighter performance reporting from April 2026, including more detailed workload and timing data for emergency response and a stronger baseline focus on vulnerability.

Preparing for rising case volumes

The pressure on validation teams is likely to rise because the work that creates GSOP cases is growing. Under RIIO-GD3, roughly £5.9bn is committed to replace about 17,000 km of old iron main between 2026 and 2031. That programme will create planned interruptions, notice records, field evidence and reinstatement work across large numbers of properties.

Now add a large main failure that leaves a few hundred homes off gas. Each affected property has its own GS1 timeline. Some customers may be restored inside 24 hours, while others cross one or more complete 24-hour periods and become eligible for uncapped escalating payments. Some may be on the Priority Services Register and need extra support while supply is off. The same event can contain clear passes, clear breaches, escalating payments, vulnerability obligations and disputed evidence.

That is the moment when a manual validation team is usually slowest. Customers need payment decisions quickly, payment teams need clean instructions before the GS12 deadline, and the network needs a record it can defend long after the interruption has ended.