Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make it his policy to support off-grid households to connect to the gas network.
The Gas Act 1986 already confers a duty on my rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State to ‘secure that, so far as it is economical to meet them, all reasonable demands in Great Britain for gas conveyed through pipes’. This duty is exercised through obligations and licence conditions placed upon gas operators.
In addition, the Gas Act 1986 (ss.9 & 10) also confers on Gas Distribution Network operators the obligation to comply with requests to be connected to their gas mains, so far as it is economical to do so, and where the premises to be connected are within 23 metres of a relevant main.