Insights

Running CSRD and UK SRS as One Reporting Operation

A growing number of UK groups face both the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, through their European entities, and the UK’s own Sustainability Reporting Standards, now finalised. The instinct is to run two projects. The better approach is to run one reporting operation that produces two outputs, because the expensive, slow work underneath, the data and the controls, is largely shared. Treating them separately duplicates effort and produces inconsistency; treating them as one is cheaper and more robust.

By Christopher Fagan

What the two regimes share

Both regimes rest on the same underlying material: emissions, energy, workforce and other sustainability data, produced with control and capable of being assured. Collecting that data, establishing ownership, and building the controls to make it reliable is the bulk of the work, and it serves both regimes. Build it once, well, and you have the foundation for either.

Where they differ, and why it matters

The key divergence is materiality. The UK standards, following ISSB, are grounded in financial materiality. The European standards require double materiality, both impact and financial. This means the European report demands impact information the UK framework does not, and the assessment work, while overlapping, is not identical. The practical rule: where you owe double materiality anywhere, do it properly, because it is a superset of what financial materiality requires. We set the comparison out in CSRD and UK SRS: what UK groups need to know.

How to run it as one operation

Assess scope under both regimes, entity by entity. The tests differ, so a group can be inside one and outside the other.
Build one data and control foundation that serves both, rather than two parallel collection efforts.
Do the materiality work for the stricter standard, then use the subset each regime needs.
Present, do not rebuild. Two disclosures drawn from one controlled dataset, rather than two separately assembled reports that will not reconcile.
Assure once, coherently. A single, well controlled reporting operation is far easier to assure than two overlapping ones.

The payoff

Run as one operation, dual reporting costs a fraction of two separate efforts, produces consistent numbers across both regimes, and is markedly easier to assure. Run as two projects, it duplicates the hardest work, invites inconsistency between the reports, and doubles the assurance burden. The regimes are two outputs of one capability. Build the capability once.

Talk to us

We help UK groups build a single reporting operation across both regimes. See ESG and compliance or get in touch.