Close Geographic Regions and the multi-premises rule

The rule

The Multiple Premises procedure is mandatory, not optional. A project installing micro-generation across a number of premises in a Close Geographic Region — commonly a housing development with 20 or more plots installed inside a month — must be discussed with the DNO at the earliest opportunity and have the shared Form A application approved before anything connects.

The 28-day window is how the standard bounds the programme: connect-and-notify covers a single premises, and G98 withdraws it where the installer has installed — or plans, within 28 days either side, to install — the programme’s other premises in the region. In other words a development can’t be filed as a string of individual notifications by spacing the paperwork. A standalone job with no sibling installs from the same programme inside the window stays connect-and-notify (Form B alone, within 28 days of commissioning).

The reason is the network: one micro-generator on a street is noise, but a cluster on the same LV feeder or transformer adds up, and connect-and-notify was scoped on the assumption of one. So the DNO wants to assess the cluster as a cluster, once, before it energises.

The procedure is for a planned programme of work — G98’s own scope words. Unrelated one-off jobs that happen to land near each other are each their own single premises; what the procedure stops is a genuine multi-premises project being split into a string of individual notifications.

What counts as a Close Geographic Region

G98 defines it as any of:

• One LV feeder — the area served by a single low-voltage feeder circuit from one distribution transformer.
• An area the DNO confirms as one region, on request.
• Postcode or distance — the premises’ postcodes match when the last two letters are ignored (AB1 2xx), or the premises are within 500 m of each other.

How the procedure works

• Before any install: one G98 Form A application covering every premises. The form is a single application: addressed to one DNO, naming one customer/developer and one installer, with a row per premises (address, postcode, MPAN). The DNO approves it before the first unit is energised.
• After each install: each premises still files its own Form B notification within 28 days of its commissioning, exactly as a standalone G98 job would.

Everything else about each premises stays normal G98 — the capacity thresholds are per premises, and the registered-capacity guide’s arithmetic applies at each one individually.

In CLRD

A multi-premise batch is how CLRD runs the procedure, shaped exactly like the form: one client, one DNO, one shared system configuration, and a list of premises, fanned out into a standalone job per premises — each with its own site, MPAN, documents and audit trail — under a parent that owns the shared Form A.

• CLRD decides whether Form A is required from the postcodes: premises sharing a postcode sector are a Close Geographic Region, and the shared application is produced. Where they don’t share one, you confirm whether another region condition applies (one feeder, within 500 m, or DNO-confirmed) — and if none does, the premises are simply notified separately.
• The batch holds installation until approval: the DNO approves the one application, then each premises installs and files its own Form B from its own job. Signatures, the single-line diagram and the proposed installation date are captured once on the batch; beyond the form’s ten printed rows the pack adds a Premises Schedule listing every premises.

And where the region criteria don’t require a Form A, a batch is still the best way to run the project: it manages the independent notifications as a group — a folder of jobs — with much faster data entry (one client and one system configuration, entered once) and batch actions to generate, submit and mark the premises installed together.