Burnham Unveils Great British Grid Investment Plan

Great British Grid is the name Andy Burnham has given to a new publicly owned company that will invest in Britain's electricity network, announced during his first party conference speech as Labour leader in Liverpool.

The prime minister told activists the body will challenge private sector operators. It's going to increase competition, drive down costs and speed up connections. That's the pitch. So businesses can expand more quickly, he said, framing the plan as part of a broader goal to bring UK energy costs in line with other European nations within ten years, a promise he tied directly to the new body's supposed power to take on private operators, boost competition, cut costs and speed up connections, though he didn't say how. We've got ten years.

Few details have been settled. What is clear is the ambition: a state-backed player entering a market that has been wholly privatised for decades.

A Grid Built for Another Era

Britain's transmission network was designed around large fossil fuel stations. The shift to renewables has moved generation to remote locations, particularly offshore wind farms, and the ageing grid needs a great deal of rewiring to carry that power to homes and businesses.

The numbers involved are substantial. Energy regulator Ofgem has estimated that £70bn of investment is required in the grid between 2025 and 2031, quadrupling the current rate.

State subsidies go to private companies. They're meant to modernise the grid, and that's where some of the pressure on bills comes from, because those costs end up added to customer bills, which is a loop, and that loop is part of what Burnham wants to break. But it's a loop. Burnham wants to break it. He can't do it alone, and we've seen how these costs keep landing on customers, so the question is whether anyone can actually stop that cycle from repeating itself year after year.

How the New Body Would Work

Labour says it'll create a Great British Grid. That body would invest in transmission connection projects. And it would compete for them too, against the three private companies that own and manage the grid right now. It would also make it easier for firms waiting to be connected to finance connection infrastructure themselves, with the new body supporting and potentially co-investing in projects alongside them.

Funding will be found within the existing budget of GB Energy, the public green investment company set up last year and now headquartered in Aberdeen. No new money has been announced.

Burnham put greater public control of utilities at the centre of his pitch for power over the summer, and the conference speech continued that theme. "Energy, water, housing. Back under stronger public control," he told delegates. "We rely on them, we pay for them and once again we will have power over them."

"A publicly-owned company that will challenge the private sector operators. It will increase competition, drive down costs and speed up connections."

The Queue Nobody Can Ignore

The case for intervention has been building for some time. In a report earlier this month, the National Audit Office warned that the number of projects waiting to connect to the grid had grown significantly while delays to projects were also increasing.

Matthew Lawrence is the founder of the think tank Common Wealth. He's also a former adviser to Burnham. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the UK is unusual in having a wholly privatised grid, which had led to decades of sluggish development and chronic underinvestment. That's the problem. And Tuesday's announcement, he said, seems to have fixed that by bringing public investment into new parts of the grid.

The private sector is not standing still.

Dhara Vyas, chief executive of Energy UK, welcomed the investment. But she pointed out that the bulk of it will be private. Transmission owners, the ones building the highway of pylons that moves electricity from source to homes and businesses, are spending £90bn over the next five years, she said.

Opposition and the Road Ahead

Conservative shadow energy secretary Andrew Bowie said the prime minister wanted to nationalise the network. He argued the Conservatives would get out of the way, letting businesses build their own gas power and grid connections, bid openly for capacity, and cut electricity costs through what the party calls its Cheap Power Plan.

Burnham also used the speech to promise a national energy plan for the first time, stronger powers for mayors and local leaders, and what he described as an honest conversation with the public about difficult issues that have been ignored for too long.

On North Sea oil and gas, with decisions looming on Jackdaw and Rosebank, he said he would be pragmatic as the country builds a bridge to a clean energy future while confronting the climate crisis.

The Great British Grid now has a name. It's got a funding source too. And a stated purpose. But what it doesn't yet have is a detailed structure, a timeline or a confirmed list of projects, and those three things, the structure, the timeline, the project list, will determine whether it genuinely shifts the economics of connection or simply adds another participant to a queue that is already too long. Those will decide everything. They're the difference. We can't say yet which way it goes.