We continued to focus on helping our customers in British Gas Energy in 2022, choosing to invest as much in customer service and support as we made in profits for the year, including through the UK’s biggest ever energy support package totalling £50m. Residential customer numbers increased by 256,000, or 4%, over 2022. This included a net increase of 158,000 customers who joined us through Ofgem’s Supplier of Last Resort Process from Together Energy, while we also saw organic net growth of 98,000 in the year, against a backdrop of low levels of market switching. We also delivered a 25,000, or 5%, increase in the number of small business customers we serve, to 480,000, including organic net growth of 18,000.

We continued to focus on fixing operational delivery in British Gas Services & Solutions in 2022, to improve the experience for our customers. We have been focused on recruitment, to enable us to complete a greater proportion of jobs using our own workforce, and in 2022 recruited over 800 engineers.

While Bord Gáis Energy saw the return to service of Whitegate CCGT, the retail energy supply business was loss making in 2022, reflecting our decision to protect customers and absorb higher commodity costs. We have committed to donate 10% of Bord Gáis adjusted operating profit to our energy support fund to help vulnerable customers for the duration of the current crisis. The number of customers grew by 17,000 in 2022, with the addition of customers from failed suppliers, and good retention rates reflecting the support we provided for existing customers.

The amount of energy supplied by Centrica Business Solutions to medium and large sized businesses was flat at 22.3TWh compared to 2021, with the easing of COVID-19 restrictions and underlying growth in medium sized business volumes being offset by the impacts of warmer weather and lower underlying customer demand in response to higher prices and the economic climate.

Our EM&T business has a diverse portfolio of contracted positions and is very well positioned when commodity prices are high and/or volatile, given our in-depth understanding of energy markets and ability to manage system complexity. We deployed more working capital, with an outflow of £1.2bn relating to investment in gas inventory for our storage and LNG positions and unrealised profit on derivative positions. However, this investment was well rewarded, with material in-year profits from our Gas & Power trading, Route-to-Market and LNG activities.