May 27, 2025
SRS: The Most Important Reporting Change You’ve Never Heard Of
Learn how the SRS standards will fundamentally change how corporate reporting works in the UK.

Stephen Pell
Co-founder and CEO
Standards
4 Min Read
Why UK SRS Will Redefine What It Means to Be an Accountant
Written by Stephen Pell, FCCA CTA, CEO & Co-founder of neoeco
If you're working in group finance, internal audit, or reporting right now and haven’t had time to deep-dive the UK’s new Sustainability Reporting Standards, don’t worry. You’re not alone.
Most people I speak to in finance haven’t heard much about them either.
But here’s the problem: These standards will fundamentally change how corporate reporting works in the UK. And they land squarely in your remit.
Not Just Another ESG Framework
Forget soft, voluntary, high-level ESG reporting.
UK SRS is a formal endorsement of IFRS S1 and S2, the International Sustainability Standards Board’s global baseline, with the UK government planning to finalise implementation from 2025.
And while it might sound niche or optional, it’s anything but.
UK SRS will mean:
Climate risk, governance, and sustainability disclosures must be included in mainstream financial reports, not separate ESG documents.
That data must be assured.
And it must be tied to business models, strategy, and, crucially, financial outcomes.
This isn’t storytelling. It’s reporting.
Why It Matters to Accountants
Accountants and finance teams are about to become the custodians of sustainability data.
That’s not because the rules say “this is finance’s job.” It’s because no one else in the organisation knows how to:
Operate internal control environments
Build data integrity into reporting processes
Make disclosures audit-ready
Connect risk to financial performance
The expectation will be that:
Scope 1–3 emissions aren’t just disclosed, they’re mapped to business units and ledgers.
Climate risks aren’t listed vaguely, they’re modelled against P&L, balance sheet, and capital allocation.
Governance statements aren't broad brush, they’re aligned with existing financial controls.
Sound familiar?
This is the type of work accountants already do, just now with a sustainability lens.
The Hidden Shift Most Finance Teams Don’t See Coming
There’s something different about UK SRS that many have missed:
It doesn’t treat sustainability as external. It pulls it into the core of financial reporting.
Whereas previous ESG regimes let companies tick boxes or tell their story from the sidelines, UK SRS demands:
Connectivity between sustainability and cashflow
Comparability against peers and across industries
Consistency across time, risk factors, and materiality
And most importantly, it treats sustainability-related risks the same way we treat credit, currency, or macroeconomic risks, through the lens of financial impact and disclosure obligations.
What This Means for You
If you’re a group accountant, finance manager, or internal auditor, this has been added to your job description:
Support materiality assessments and validate sustainability inputs
Align climate and ESG risks with enterprise risk registers
Design control processes for non-financial metrics
Prepare audit trails for emissions, scenario models, and governance data
Translate sustainability strategy into structured, compliant disclosures
This won’t just sit in the sustainability team’s silo. It will be reviewed by your board. Scrutinised by your auditor. And expected to tie into your existing financial controls.
A New Chapter for Finance
This is a moment of evolution, not just for ESG, but for accounting.
In the same way SOX and digital transformation reshaped finance roles in the 2000s, UK SRS is pushing finance professionals into a new frontier: financially-integrated sustainability management.
You don’t need to be a climate expert. But you do need to know how sustainability affects the business. And how to help your company report it credibly, consistently, and in a way investors can trust.
That’s the CFO, FD, Climate Manager and Reporting Manager's job. And increasingly, it’s every accountant’s job too.
Final Thought
If you’ve ever felt that ESG reporting was fluffy, peripheral, or not your problem, that changes now.
UK SRS is bringing real rigour, real rules, and real financial consequences to the way companies report sustainability.
The best-prepared finance teams will see this not as a burden, but as a moment to lead. To influence how sustainability is operationalised, governed, and reported.
The rules are changing. And finance is back in the driver’s seat.