The public company’s first annual accounts and later parliamentary answers show the transition taking place behind its Aberdeen headquarters: a workforce initially assembled entirely from civil servants, secondees and contractors is beginning to become a directly employed organisation.
Great British Energy had 121 people in its workforce at the end of March 2026 but did not directly employ any of them, according to its first annual report and accounts. By early September, a later UK Government answer put the workforce at 132 and said 55 were permanent employees of the company.
The two snapshots, separated by little more than five months, provide the clearest account yet of how the publicly owned energy company is moving from its start-up structure into a permanent organisation headquartered in Aberdeen.
Modern Scot reported on 21 August, in More Than A Third Of Great British Energy Staff Live Outside Scotland Despite Aberdeen Headquarters, on the geographical distribution of the workforce and the number of people then living outside Scotland. The newly published annual accounts answer a different question: what kind of workforce Great British Energy had built by the end of its first reporting period, before much of its permanent recruitment had taken place.
The dates are important. The March accounts should not be treated as contradicting the later August and September workforce figures. They show the organisation at an earlier stage, when staff had largely been supplied by government departments, other organisations and contractors.
The March workforce was entirely borrowed, seconded or contracted
At 31 March, Great British Energy recorded a total workforce headcount of 121.
Of those, 24 were employed by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero on Great British Energy’s behalf. Another 73 were on loan from DESNZ or other parts of the Civil Service. Six were secondees and 18 were contractors.
The company stated explicitly that it had no directly employed staff at that date.
That position affected even the disclosures normally expected in an annual report. Great British Energy said it had not yet approved its own pay and reward framework during the period and therefore did not have employees working under Great British Energy terms and conditions for the purposes of its fair-pay reporting. It said it expected those disclosures to begin in its 2026–27 annual report.
The accounts recorded £7.9 million in staff costs. They also show £3.8 million in professional-services expenditure, described as consultancy services, during the reporting period.
At 31 March, 18 off-payroll engagements earning more than £245 a day were in place, all of them for less than a year. Across the reporting period, the company recorded 27 temporary off-payroll workers; 26 were assessed as falling within the off-payroll working rules and one outside them.
None of those figures is unusual evidence by itself of misconduct or excessive staffing. New public bodies are often created using staff loaned from departments, secondees and specialist contractors while permanent recruitment, governance and systems are established. What the accounts provide is an audited baseline for the scale of that dependence in Great British Energy’s first year.
By September, 55 people were directly employed
A written parliamentary answer published on 8 September shows how quickly the composition changed.
The UK Government said Great British Energy then had 132 staff: 55 permanent employees, 31 contractors and 46 secondees.
That means direct employment had moved from zero at the end of March to 55 by the time of the September answer, while the overall workforce had increased by 11.
The later figures also provide more detail about the seconded workforce. Of the 46 secondees, two were based in Aberdeen, ten elsewhere in Scotland and 34 elsewhere in the United Kingdom. The Government said the majority came from DESNZ, with others supplied by the Scottish Government, Ofgem, the Government Legal Service, the Department for Education, ORE Catapult, Baringa, CO2 Sense and Xodus.
That distribution should not be confused with the location of the entire Great British Energy workforce. It applies specifically to the 46 secondees covered by the parliamentary answer.
Nor does the Government maintain a central record of employees’ home addresses. In a separate answer, it said Great British Energy had no fixed organisation-wide requirement for a particular number of office days and that working arrangements were agreed individually, with hybrid working used where appropriate.
Those details explain part of the difficulty in measuring what an Aberdeen headquarters means in employment terms. The company can be headquartered in Aberdeen while maintaining employees, secondees and contractors elsewhere in Scotland and the wider UK. The more useful measurements are therefore the number of jobs principally based in Aberdeen, the number of directly employed staff attached to the headquarters and how those figures change as temporary arrangements are replaced.
The permanent headquarters opened after the accounts closed
The March accounts also pre-date the formal opening of Great British Energy’s permanent headquarters at Marischal Square.
The accounts show that a 12-year lease for the Aberdeen headquarters began in February 2026. They record a right-of-use asset and corresponding lease liability of approximately £2.6 million.
Great British Energy formally marked the opening of the headquarters on 22 September. At the same time, it announced £750,000 for a north-east Scotland partnership intended to support energy skills, training and employability, and said it would aim for 5 per cent of its own workforce to be in entry-level and early-career pathways.
The sequence matters. At the end of March, the company had secured its headquarters lease but had no directly employed staff. By September, the headquarters had opened and the company said it had 55 permanent employees.
The accounts therefore capture the organisation before the transition that many people in Aberdeen will ultimately use to judge the headquarters: whether a public company created with a stated connection to the city builds a substantial permanent workforce there rather than simply locating its registered centre in Aberdeen.
A £14.1 million first-period loss reflects the set-up phase
Great British Energy reported a £14.1 million loss for its first accounting period, with operating expenses of approximately £14.2 million. The figure should be read in the context of a company being established rather than as the trading loss of a mature energy producer.
Great British Energy was incorporated in October 2024 and received its statutory footing when the Great British Energy Act received Royal Assent in May 2025. Costs incurred before Royal Assent remained with DESNZ rather than being included in the company’s financial statements.
The first accounts therefore cover the creation of governance, finance, staffing and operational systems as well as the beginning of the company’s investment activity.
For Aberdeen, the staffing figures are the more revealing part of the document because they establish how much of the early company existed through arrangements with other institutions.
The Government had already said earlier in 2026 that the majority of permanent Great British Energy roles were expected to be based in Aberdeen and that the company expected to create hundreds of jobs there over its first five years. The March accounts show how far there still was to travel at the end of the first reporting period.
The next accounts will be the first test of the permanent organisation
The 2026–27 annual report should look fundamentally different from the first.
It should contain the company’s first full-year disclosures for directly employed staff, its pay framework, a larger permanent workforce and a longer period in which the Marischal Square headquarters has been operating.
It will also allow a cleaner comparison between the people who work directly for Great British Energy and those supplied by departments, consultancies and other organisations.
For now, the available records show a transition rather than a settled workforce.
At 31 March, Great British Energy had 121 people and none was directly employed by the company. By September, the workforce had risen to 132 and 55 were permanent employees. Between those two dates, the Aberdeen headquarters moved from a lease in the accounts to an operating office.
Modern Scot’s earlier reporting established that a substantial part of the wider workforce remained outside Scotland. The next question is now more precise: as Great British Energy converts a start-up organisation into a permanent company, how many of the jobs that replace the borrowed, seconded and contracted workforce will actually be rooted in Aberdeen and the north-east?
Sources
- Great British Energy — Annual Report and Accounts 2025 to 2026, published 14 September 2026. UK Government publication page.
- UK Parliament — Written question 24781, answered 8 September 2026, on Great British Energy staffing and secondees. Read the parliamentary answer.
- UK Parliament — Written question 21021, answered 8 September 2026, on staff location and working arrangements. Read the parliamentary answer.
- Great British Energy — Great British Energy opens its doors in Aberdeen as it promises a lasting legacy for generations of energy workers, 22 September 2026. Read the announcement.
- Modern Scot — More Than A Third Of Great British Energy Staff Live Outside Scotland Despite Aberdeen Headquarters, 21 August 2026. Modern Scot Aberdeen City archive.
