Elexon publishes final version of the 2025/26 business plan
We have published the final version of our 2025/2026 business plan setting out activities we will deliver between April 2025 and March 2026, supporting progress to Clean Power 2030 and Net Zero.
The budget covers all of our work areas for managing Balancing and Settlement Code services, and continuing investment in our major programmes. These include the Market-wide Half Hourly Settlement (MHHS) Programme, our Helix Programme (to develop BSC systems to support half-hourly settlement) and delivery for our data and digitalisation objectives.
Summary of the business plan
How Parties will benefit from our investment
Our core duty remains unchanged as we will continue to deliver excellent, accurate Settlement services to Parties. The investment we are making in our systems will deliver benefits for BSC Parties which include faster Settlement, and visibility of half-hourly consumption data, which will help companies to develop new products and services.
New roles we will be delivering in 2025/26
The budget also covers costs for new roles we are taking on in 2025/26, which include the market facilitator for flexibility, the operation of the Data Integration Platform messaging service, and provision of half-hourly data through the development of our smart meter data repository, through which we will provide open access to data, once meters transition to half-hourly settlement.
Budget £118.9m in 2025/26
At its March meeting, Elexon’s Board agreed a budget of £118.9m for 2025/26 compared with the £119.0m budget for 2024/25. The budget of £118.9m is a significant increase on our previous cost projection for 2025/26 of £88.6m, in the 2024/25 plan.
The main driver for the increase is the costs associated with moving the date of Milestone 10 of the MHHS Programme (and subsequent milestones), from March 2025 to September 2025. Milestone 10 is when Elexon’s central systems are to be ready for migrating meters to the new arrangements.
We have also planned for additional resources needed for the integration of half-hourly settlement into Elexon. Next year (2025/26) includes part of the period of cutover, migration of meters to MHHS and dual-running of old and new Settlement processes.
£3.8m of efficiency savings
We have made cost and efficiency savings of £3.8m, which are reflected in the 2025/26 budget. They relate to the decommissioning of various systems:
- The Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service (the forerunner of our Insights Solution platform)
- Profiling services (which are no longer needed given the move to half-hourly settlement
- The Radio Teleswitch Service.
We will look to set challenging financial and efficiency targets for the business, which ensure that we continue to deliver the best possible value for money to the industry.
£3m – £5m to be returned to BSC Parties
Elexon is not-for-profit and we do not carry any reserves or retained capital. Therefore any underspend against budget is always returned to BSC Parties.
We are quantifying the amount that we expect to return to Parties in respect of the 2024/25 business plan. We currently expect this to be between £3m and £5m.
Feedback on the plan
Our thanks go to companies that provided feedback on the 2025/26 business plan. Your views were considered and taken into account when the Board made its final decision on the plan.
Thank you for your support
On behalf of the Board, Elexon would like to acknowledge and thank BSC Parties, all Workgroup members, the BSC Panel, all the BSC committees, and all Elexon colleagues for their continuing support of the work that we do.
Feedback from BSC Panel
Final version of the business plan
- Final Elexon business plan for 2025/26
- Elexon’s business plan 2025/26 (December 2024 version published for feedback)
Webinar about the business plan
We held a webinar for BSC Parties about the 2025/25 business plan on 14 January 2025.