Responsibilities
Under the nationalised structure, the CEGB was responsible for electricity generation in England and Wales, whilst in Scotland electricity generation was carried out by the South of Scotland Electricity Board and the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board.
The organisation was unusual in that most of its senior staff were professional engineers, but with excellent support in financial and risk-management areas.
Some people feel that it represented the best of Government planning, others feel that it had become a monolith that exemplified the worst aspects of central planning, and was ripe for reform. It is probably the case that, in its most successful period, up until the mid 1970s, it was managed in a way broadly comparable to large private-sector energy majors such as BP, but that it was late to respond to the changed pattern of energy growth following the second oil crisis.
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