Incident overview and closure
DCC notified industry parties, including RECCo, on 06/07/23 that a major incident with the Central Switching Service (CSS) was impacting supply switch messages and new registration messages for gas and electricity supply customers. DCC has since updated CSS with the required information and sent the missing switch messages and new registration messages to market participants. This activity was completed by 08/08/23 in line with DCC’s planned timeframes.
DCC’s report
DCC formally closed the P1 switching incident on 12/09/23 and issued a Post Incident Report Summary to the REC service desk, within their committed timeframe, to allow market participants to access it. DCC have also sent a copy of the summary report to PAB members for their review.
DCC will take the following next steps in closing out the incident:
- A more detailed Post Incident Review will be issued to market participants, via the REC Service Desk before 06/10/23, in line with DCC’s committed timelines.
- DCC will hold a lessons learnt review session with market participants on 21/09/23 where industry views of how DCC managed the incident will be shared together with a DCC generated action plan designed to take into account industry feedback and make required improvements as necessary.
- The outputs of the lessons learnt review will be shared with REC and SOIF members.
RECCo’s further actions
RECCo remains very aware of the frustrations felt by many market participants concerning this incident, including its duration and DCC’s approach to communication with the wider industry. Accordingly, RECCo is conducting its own review into the incident, as set out below.
Our own wide-ranging post-incident review will be provided to the REC Board, industry and Ofgem. We are working with DCC – and drawing on support from the Code Manager, our legal advisers, and impacted stakeholders to ensure that we capture a full range of inputs. RECCo has shared the initial scope of the review with Industry PAB members to ensure it will deliver the correct level of oversight across all aspects of the incident and that all the relevant lessons are learned to prevent a repeat of this incident. Importantly, RECCo will ensure the review identifies the required changes and improvements to ensure the correct, robust framework is in place to assure industry market participants that the DCC’s CSS is given clear direction regarding its response to any future incidents. The RECCo review will also ensure that the appropriate actions and sanctions are allocated to the appropriate parties if performance levels are found to have been missed, or there have been breaches of the REC.
RECCo expects to present the preliminary findings of its review to the REC PAB in September and will share those findings with market participants as soon as possible.
