Insights
The UK now has its own sustainability reporting standards. The government published the UK Sustainability Reporting Standards, S1 and S2, in early 2026, based on the international ISSB baseline. For UK companies, this moves sustainability reporting from something on the horizon to something with a defined shape, and it changes the planning question from “will there be a UK standard” to “what do we do about the one we now have”.
By Christopher Fagan
The UK SRS are built on the ISSB’s IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards: S1 covering general sustainability related financial disclosures, and S2 covering climate specifically. Their orientation is financial materiality, information relevant to investors and the enterprise’s value, which is a meaningful difference from the European approach, and one worth understanding clearly if you also report in the EU.
The distinction that matters most is materiality. The UK standards, following ISSB, are grounded in financial materiality: what affects the business. The European standards require double materiality: both your impact on the world and the financial effect on you. A UK group with EU entities may owe both, and they are not satisfied by writing once and filing twice. We covered this in CSRD and UK SRS: what UK groups need to know, and the arrival of the final UK standards makes getting the relationship right more pressing, not less.
The FCA published its final rules in September 2026 (PS26/19). For accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027, with the first reports in 2028, companies with UK listed shares report against UK SRS S1 and S2 in place of the old TCFD rules. Every disclosure operates on a comply or explain basis, including the climate standard and scope 3 emissions, with a year of relief for scope 3 and two years for the wider S1 topics so that companies can start with climate. A few statements are mandatory: where the disclosures can be found, whether they were independently assured, and, for commercial companies, whether a transition plan has been published. Large private companies are not covered by these rules, and the government has said it will consult on them separately.
The slowest parts of sustainability reporting, reliable data and the controls to make it assurable, take the best part of two years for a large organisation. The standards being final removes the last excuse to wait for clarity. Organisations that use the run in to build the data and control foundation will report calmly. Those that treat a phased timeline as permission to delay will not.
They form part of an evolving UK reporting landscape that already includes SECR and TCFD aligned disclosure. The sensible approach is to treat these as one connected reporting operation rather than separate obligations. See SECR reporting.
Potentially both, assessed entity by entity, because the UK and EU regimes have different scope tests. See CSRD readiness and our note on CSRD scope.
We help UK groups make sense of the UK and EU regimes together, and our CSRD vs UK SRS comparison sets out where they differ. See ESG and compliance or get in touch.
If any of this is live for you right now, the senior people who wrote it are the people you would work with.