Capabilities
The double materiality assessment decides what you report, which decides what data you have to build. It is the most consequential single exercise in sustainability reporting and the one most often done in a hurried workshop. A rushed assessment gets redone. A careful one holds up for several.
PEF Consulting Partners provides independent double materiality assessment services for UK and European businesses, delivered by senior consultants with regulated sector experience. The rules changed under the 2025 Omnibus, so before you spend anything, check whether CSRD still applies to you with our free CSRD checker.
You cannot assess impacts you have not identified, and most impacts sit upstream and downstream rather than in your own operations. We map the value chain first, because everything else depends on it.
Impact materiality looks outward at your effect on people and the environment, including potential and negative impacts. Financial materiality looks inward at the sustainability risks and opportunities that could affect your cash flows, financing and cost of capital. A matter is material if it meets either test. We assess both, properly, rather than collapsing them into one score.
Affected stakeholders for impact, users of financial statements for financial materiality. These are different groups asked different questions, and a single combined survey satisfies neither. We design and run the engagement so the results stand up.
A documented, consistently applied scoring method, a deliberate governance decision on where the materiality threshold sits, and the reasoning captured in full. Your assurance provider will not accept a conclusion without the reasoning behind it, and this is where most assessments fail.
An extra month getting the assessment right routinely removes several months of unnecessary data collection later, because you stop building for datapoints that were never material. And a defensible assessment is the difference between a smooth assurance process and a painful one.
For a mid sized group with a contained value chain, six to ten weeks. Stakeholder availability is almost always the constraint, not analytical effort. International groups with extended supply chains take longer.
Often, in part. We can review an existing assessment, tell you honestly whether it will withstand assurance, and strengthen the weak points rather than starting again.
Yes. Voluntary reporters who want their disclosures to be credible still need a defensible view of what is material.
See our detailed note on what a double materiality assessment actually involves, plus CSRD readiness. Or get in touch.
We bring senior people who have delivered exactly this at scale. Honest advice, and accountability for the outcome.