On a mixed site, BICS support is pro-rata to the share of electricity used for eligible manufacturing. Below 25% eligible use, the site gets nothing; above it, the exemption scales to the eligible proportion. Your band is decided by how well you evidence that proportion through MPAN attribution and sub-metering — which is where most manufacturers under-claim.
Few real sites are 100% eligible manufacturing. Most mix a qualifying process with offices, warehousing, cold storage, packing lines or non-qualifying products. BICS handles this with a pro-rata rule — and because the rule turns on evidence rather than assertion, mixed sites are where bands are quietly won or lost.
The 25% floor
The first test is a hard gate: if less than 25% of a site’s total electricity use is attributable to eligible manufacturing activity, the site qualifies for no exemption at all. The floor is deliberate — it keeps support focused on genuinely electricity-intensive industrial processes rather than incidental consumption. A site that is mostly warehouse with a small production cell will typically fall below it; a site built around a qualifying process will clear it comfortably.
How pro-rata banding works
Clear the floor and the exemption scales to your eligible share. In simple terms, the relief applies to the portion of the site’s electricity that feeds eligible manufacturing — so a site where 70% of consumption is eligible captures far more than one at 30%, even though both qualify. Two sites with identical SIC and HS codes and identical total consumption can land very different outcomes purely on their mix.
Two 10 GWh sites, both eligible on SIC and HS. Site A runs a continuous qualifying process at 75% eligible use; Site B is a mixed unit at 35%. At ~£37/MWh, Site A’s relief base is ~7.5 GWh (~£277k/yr) while Site B’s is ~3.5 GWh (~£130k/yr) — same codes, same size, less than half the value, decided entirely by mix and evidence. Illustrative only.
The evidence that defends a higher band
Because the proportion is what you must prove, the band is an evidence exercise, not a negotiation. The pieces that matter:
- MPAN mapping. Show clearly which MPANs sit at which manufacturing site, so eligible and non-eligible consumption aren’t blurred across a portfolio.
- Sub-metering. Where a single supply feeds both eligible and non-eligible loads, sub-metering that isolates the qualifying process is the difference between a defensible high band and a conservative estimate.
- Process attribution. A clear, documented link between metered load and eligible manufacturing activity — not a top-down guess at “roughly half.”
Common mistakes that cost a band
- Estimating instead of metering. A round-number guess is easy to challenge and usually conservative — you leave relief on the table.
- Lumping a portfolio together. Averaging eligible use across sites can drag a strong site below its true band, or push a weak one where it doesn’t belong.
- Ignoring shared loads. Cold storage, compressed air, HVAC and lighting that partly serve the eligible process are often written off entirely when a share of them belongs in the eligible column.
- Leaving metering until the deadline. Sub-metering can’t be installed retrospectively for a window that’s already closed. The time to fix attribution is before 30 November.
Not sure what band your mixed site would land?
We map your MPANs and metering and model the eligible share before you submit.