Published reports

Quite a lot of the work that we prepare for our clients is unpublished and confidential. And we often draft material and produce analysis which clients incorporate directly into their own publications. For instance, over the last few years, our consultants have fed into regulatory documents published by Ofgem and regulatory submissions from water companies.

We provide links below to some self-contained Reckon reports commissioned by our clients that have been published.

Publications for download

Report for three water companies (Anglian Water, United Utilities and Wessex Water) concerning the opportunities for a more coherent regulatory approach for Ofwat’s funding of base expenditure and enhancements. This is intended to contribute to Ofwat’s PR24 price review. It includes options to help tackle the capex bias for enhancement initiatives that arose at PR19 and practical suggestions for reducing a series of other concerns. It builds on a firm conceptual foundation - including on the performance levels that are funded by base-plus allowances - and is informed by simulation modelling analysis.

Report for six water companies (Anglian Water, Northumbrian Water, Welsh Water, Yorkshire Water, Wessex Water and South East Water) concerning Ofwat’s incorporation of growth-related expenditure into its econometric benchmarking of base costs during the PR19 price review process (August 2019).

A series of reports for three water companies (Anglian Water, Northumbrian Water and Wessex Water) concerning the treatment of enhancement operating expenditure as part of Ofwat’s PR19 price review process:

  • Review of Ofwat’s treatment of enhancement operating expenditure in its initial assessment of companies’ business plans (March 2019).

  • Report on the application of a totex approach to cost benchmarking (June 2019).

  • Working paper on the approach to implicit allowances (June 2019).

Report for Anglian Water, to provide evidence on the company’s natural rate of RCV run-off, which was used as an input to its business plan for the PR19 price review process (August 2018).

Report for Ofgem which provided a review of potential approaches for the economic regulation of the GB electricity system operator, National Grid ESO (June 2018).

Working paper for the Utility Regulator setting out a proposed approach to work concerning the determination of a new five-year price control for the Northern Ireland electricity system operator, SONI, with a focus on the estimation of the cost of capital and assessment of financeability (December 2018).

Excel model, and explanatory note, commissioned by Ofwat to provide a tool for regulated water companies to produces estimates of the annualised unit costs of new water resource capacity (December 2017).

Report for Ofwat setting out a proposed methodology and guidance for water companies to use to estimate the value of their bioresoures assets, for the pursposes of RCV allocation as part of the PR19 price review process. (February 2017). Jacobs provided specialist engineering support for this project.

A stream of work for United Utilities on the development of econometric benchmarking models for the cost assessment of household retail services, for the purposes of Ofwat’s PR19 price review:

  • A working paper to explore how socio-economic deprivation and arrears risk can be captured in models of residential retail cost (May 2017).

  • Building on the above, a report putting forward a suite of econometric models for residential cost assessment (February 2018).