Business interview: Basil Scarsella, the man keeping your lights on

Strangely, despite a mini-heatwave, Scarsella put the explosions down to rainfall, and launched a yearly inspection programme for all link boxes.

It can be argued that the business has often been more reactive than pro-active under Scarsella. The chief admits that the company was initially slow in anticipating the uptake of solar power, and underestimating people’s desire for green energy and to take control of their own energy supplies.

“The uptake of solar was quicker than anybody expected — it was 15 years ahead of any optimistic predictions,” he says. “At one stage we were getting caught with the fact that we couldn’t connect any solar or windfarms — that is not a good position for us to be in, because we were holding up the transition to a low-carbon economy. The Government and investors were asking why we couldn’t connect.”

But the UKPN boss is going to have to be on high alert over the next couple of years as one man who has Scarsella firmly in his sights is Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who dislikes the clubbable “fat-cat” world of energy giants and their bosses. Should he win the next general election, he has vowed to nationalise the UK’s entire energy network, something that polls show the public supports.

In February, Corbyn told his party: “We can put Britain at the forefront of the wave of change across the world in favour of public, democratic ownership and control of our services and utilities.”

Scarsella warns that Corbyn should be careful before renationalising energy, pointing out that UKPN’s Chinese owner — the Cheung Kong Group, which also owns retailer Superdrug — is one of the biggest investors in Britain.

“Privatisation has delivered safety, improved reliability, improved customer service with reduction in costs,” Scarsella says. “The question politicians need to ask is can a nationalised industry continue to deliver all of those for the long term, because they weren’t delivering it before.”

As for the fat-cat suggestions, Scarsella is stoic. He earned £2.12 million last year and lives in a multimillion-pound townhouse in Belgravia.

He says: “I don’t hide my salary. If the issue is whether my salary is higher than it should be across the market, the answer is no. If it’s not me it will be someone else getting the salary. I focus on justifying my salary by improved performance. I welcome scrutiny as long as it’s fair.”

Scarsella’s career has been relatively straightforward: a graduate accountancy gig with what is now KPMG, later a finance role at South Australia Gas and, when that was bought by Cheung, he ended up in the UK. He then spent six years running Northern Gas Network, covering the north of England.

As a young man back in Australia he was a sportsman — a goalkeeper for Campbelltown City Soccer Club, a semi-professional football team in Adelaide.

Scarsella says he was very vocal in how the club should be run, and as a result he became involved in the administration side of the game.

He rose quickly through the ranks eventually becoming chairman of Soccer Australia, where he famously hired ex-Tottenham and England boss Terry Venables as manager for the national side.

He then became president of the Oceania Football Confederation and was elevated to the board of Fifa, the game’s international governing body, where he remained from 1999 to 2003.

He said he met Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini and the rest of Fifa’s top brass. “All my friends are all in jail now,” he quips.

But Scarsella’s jovial tone changes quickly when he talks about the recent trouble caused when UK Power Networks awarded a multimillion-pound contract to a firm in which his son is a senior director.

It related to an IT deal, worth £75 million, awarded to Enzen, where Scarsella’s son David is business operations director.

UK Power Networks asked accountancy firm KPMG to carry out a forensic investigation after a whistleblower raised concerns over Scarsella’s ties.

While KPMG found “no evidence of any wrongdoing” by UK Power Networks or staff, it certainly did some reputational damage.

A proud man, Scarsella is still reeling from the incident.

He says: “Did that hurt me? Yes. I’ve been a chief executive for 25 years, and been in senior roles for 35. Never has anything like that happened to me before, so it does scar you. I never had any concerns, but the fact that someone would think I would do something like that … importantly the contract wasn’t with my son. They even went through my emails. It was a proper investigation and their conclusion was that the process was conducted properly and I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The incident has not damaged his appetite for work, and Scarsella has no plans to retire.

He adds: “I cannot recall a day getting up in the morning where I thought I wish I didn’t have to go to work today, I’ve had enough. I’ll be 63 in September but there are no plans to retire.”

Scarsella says that were he not chief executive of UK Power Networks, he would like to be running a football club. Perhaps there’s a football shock coming this summer away from Russia.