This was the most obvious place to note this information, but mods can move it if I missed somewhere better.
Last Friday I took SSE (the DNO in our area) up on their offer of meeting to discuss our grid connection. From a previous post on our blog some people might remember this is at the higher end of most quotes (~£15k). At this meeting I gleaned he following information, which I thought might be of use to others:
1) It is now policy that SSE will not hang a transformer on a pole supporting a 33kv line, it must be tee'd off on a spur. This is a bit of a pain as it requires around an extra 10m minimum. I'm sure this is fairly recent as I haven't seen it elsewhere.
2)It's also now policy that they will allow transformers to run at ~20% over their rated capacity before they upgrade them (this was confirmed as a recent change).
3) For those of you looking at a connection with a high cost in the north of Scotland, there is a trust which apparently gives out grants of up to 50% of the connection cost. I don't know how often they do this, or the chances of success but I will definitely be looking into it (http://www.shect.org).