North Western England — your electricity distributor is Electricity North West
Electricity North West owns and maintains the local electricity network across Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria, parts of Cheshire. This is the company that fixes faults and answers power cuts here — not necessarily the one you pay.
Distributor is not supplier
It catches a lot of people out: the company you call about a power cut is almost never the company on your bill. Electricity North West is the regional Distribution Network Operator (DNO) for North Western England — a regulated monopoly that owns the physical wires, poles and substations, is licensed by Ofgem, and is paid a fixed distribution charge (recovered inside every supplier's unit rate) regardless of who you switch to. It has no relationship with you as a customer and cannot change your tariff. Your supplier — the company that bills you and that you can switch freely — is a separate, competitive business. Ofgem's find my supplier guidance and the industry's Meter Point Administration Service explain the same split on the gas side.
Postcode areas covered
Electricity North West runs distributor ID 16 across postcode areas including:
CA — The CA (Carlisle) postcode area is served by Electricity North West for power, but by Northern Gas Networks' "Northern Cumbria" licence for gas — the electricity and gas boundaries do not line up here.
Postcode areas were never drawn to match DNO boundaries, so treat this list as a strong first guess. The definitive answer is the first two digits of your MPAN — decode it with our free MPAN decoder.
Reading the first two digits of your MPAN
Every UK electricity meter has a Meter Point Administration Number. The bottom-line 13-digit core MPAN always starts with a two-digit distributor ID — a code from 10 to 23, one per DNO licence area. For North Western England that code is 16. It never changes for a given supply point, even when you switch supplier, move meter type, or your DNO rebrands. Everything else in the top line of the full 21-digit MPAN (profile class, meter time-switch class, line loss factor class) describes how the meter is configured, not where it sits on the network — the distributor ID is the only part that tells you that.
Decode your MPANNorth Western England price cap, 1 October – 31 December 2026
Ofgem's Direct Debit single-rate cap for North Western England, compared with the Great Britain average, published 26 August 2026:
| Fuel | Unit rate | Standing charge | GB average unit rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity | 26.49p/kWh | 45.68p/day | 26.32p/kWh |
| Gas | 7.86p/kWh | 29.81p/day | 7.97p/kWh |
North Western England's electricity standing charge runs below the GB average by 9.15p/day, and the unit rate runs above average by 0.17p/kWh — largely a function of Electricity North West's network investment and customer density in this licence area. Electricity figures exclude VAT (removed from domestic electricity 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027); gas includes 5% VAT. See the full breakdown, every payment method and every region on the energy price cap page.
- No. Electricity North West is the Distribution Network Operator (DNO) that owns and maintains the poles, pylons and substations that carry electricity to your property in the North Western England region. It does not sell you electricity, does not set your tariff, and does not appear as a billed party on your statement. Your supplier — the company you pay and can switch — is a separate business such as Octopus Energy, British Gas or E.ON Next, and it pays Electricity North West a regulated distribution charge on your behalf, built into your unit rate.
Send us one bill. We'll send back every overcharge — and the cheapest legitimate replacement.
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