When a charging or infrastructure project stalls at grid connection, the usual explanation is that the DNO is slow. Sometimes it is. But in my experience a lot of the delay is self-inflicted.
Applications go in with a wrong MPAN, a missing drawing, a load figure that doesn’t match the site survey. The DNO rejects or parks them, and nobody notices for weeks because the status lives in someone’s inbox.
What fixed it for us was not clever. One checklist per application, checked before submission. Every document stored against the site in Sitetracker. A status that everyone – engineering, procurement, finance – reads from the same place, with the statutory dates visible.
After that, applications stopped going missing. Each one moved at the DNO’s pace, not ours. And when an auditor asked about a site, the answer was one click away.
If your connection pipeline feels slow, check how many applications came back for corrections before blaming the network operator.
