Capabilities
Sustainability reporting under the European standards has to be assured, starting with limited assurance. That single fact changes the nature of the work. Assurance means an external party tests your numbers, your methods and your controls, and the standard of evidence is much closer to financial.
PEF Consulting Partners prepares organisations for sustainability assurance by treating disclosures like regulatory submissions: evidenced, reconciled and owned. Our leadership’s enforcement experience on Ofgem’s Energy Bills Support Scheme taught us exactly what an assurer will test.
We help you prepare the evidence, the documentation and the controls your assurance provider will ask for, before they ask for them.
For every reported number, a clear line from disclosure back to source, with the calculation and the supporting evidence retained. Assurance providers work from evidence, not assertion, and the absence of a trail is the most common finding.
Written methods for how each metric is defined, collected and calculated, including boundaries, estimations and any judgement applied. This is what an assurer tests against.
How the data is produced, who owns it, what checks it passes through and where the control points sit. If sustainability data is produced with the same discipline as financial data, assurance is straightforward. If it is not, it is not.
We can run an internal readiness review that mimics what your assurance provider will do, so the findings surface on your timetable and at your cost rather than theirs.
Closing an evidence or control gap during an active assurance engagement is slow and expensive, and it puts the reporting deadline at risk. Closing it beforehand is routine. The organisations that find assurance painful are almost always the ones that treated it as a final step rather than a design principle.
Limited assurance, the current requirement, gives a lower level of confidence and involves less extensive procedures than reasonable assurance, which is the eventual direction of travel. Preparing well for limited assurance also positions you for the higher standard later.
Yes. We can come in mid cycle, work out what the assurer needs, and help you produce it quickly.
Because assurance tests the data, not the narrative. Good ESG data management means every number in a disclosure has an owner, a documented source and a control, so an assurer can trace it from the report back to where it came from.
Any published statement of ESG information, from emissions in an annual report to a full sustainability report under UK SRS or CSRD. Each needs evidence behind it that would satisfy an assurer.
We bring senior people who have delivered exactly this at scale. Honest advice, and accountability for the outcome.