Environmental reporting is eight regimes, not one.
Most of what a UK business has to report about its environmental impact sits outside sustainability reporting standards altogether — in packaging law, waste law, water law, permitting and planning. Each has its own regulator, its own threshold and its own deadline. This page maps all eight, with the primary source behind every figure.
Nobody arranged these.
They arrived separately, over thirty years, from different departments. There is no single filing, no single portal and no single deadline. A mid-sized manufacturer with packaging, a permit and a water abstraction can be inside five of them at once and inside none of the sustainability standards everybody writes about.
Compulsory, conditional, or a choice.
The eight do not carry equal weight, and confusing the three categories is the single most expensive mistake we see. A packaging return is a legal obligation with a fee attached. A UK SRS S1 disclosure is, under what the FCA has actually proposed so far, comply-or-explain — and not before 2029. A TNFD report is nobody's requirement at all.
Compulsory now
SECR, ESOS, packaging EPR, Simpler Recycling, permits and their returns, abstraction licensing, and biodiversity net gain where you are building. These have regulators, deadlines and enforcement.
Conditional or coming
UK SRS S2 for listed issuers, proposed to bite from 1 January 2027 — the FCA's Policy Statement is expected in autumn 2026 and does not exist yet. Digital Waste Tracking becomes mandatory for waste receivers in October 2026.
Voluntary
TNFD. UK SRS S1 and S2 for anyone not listed. Nature-related disclosure of any kind. Useful, increasingly expected by lenders and buyers, and legally optional.
Five dates and a set of rolling duties.
Environmental reporting is not an annual event. It is a handful of fixed filing dates scattered through the calendar, plus obligations that run continuously and are audited by inspection rather than by return.
Pollution Inventory return for the previous calendar year, where a regulation 61(1) notice requires one.
Packaging data for small producers, and the second-half return for large producers. Small-producer registration also falls here.
First-half packaging data for large producers, and large-producer registration for the year ahead.
ESOS Phase 4 notification. The qualification date that decides whether you are in scope is 31 December 2026.
What is actually required, and from when.
Three lanes: what the law compels today, what is proposed or conditional, and what remains a choice. Every row carries the instrument or the guidance it comes from.
Six questions, then a list.
Answer as your company stands today. Nothing is stored and nothing is sent — the logic runs in your browser, and every threshold it applies is linked to the instrument that sets it.
This is indicative, not advice. It tells you which regimes are worth taking seriously; it does not tell you that you have complied with them.
The standards are climate-shaped.
UK SRS S2 is a climate standard. It has no nature content, no water content and no waste content. UK SRS S1 is general enough to catch nature where it is financially material — but under the FCA's proposals that would be comply-or-explain, with relief until 2029.
Which leaves the environmental half of environmental reporting sitting where it always sat: in permits, licences, producer responsibility and planning conditions.
Where your reporting actually stands.
Five axes, scored zero to four. Scope, data, evidence, filing and assurance — the five places environmental reporting fails, in the order it usually fails in.
Move the sliders to profile your own position. The outer ring is a complete, evidenced, filed and independently checked reporting cycle; almost nobody sits on it, and the shape of the shortfall is more useful than the score.
Your compliance score sets next year's fee.
Permit subsistence charges are not flat. The Environment Agency scores every compliance breach, totals the score over the calendar year, and uses the band that produces to multiply what you pay for the following year.
One category 1 breach is sixty points on its own — enough to move an operator from band B to band D, and a quarter onto the bill.
Four years, eight lanes.
Every regime against every year to 2029, with what changes and when. The dates that are proposals rather than law are marked as such — the FCA has not published its Policy Statement, and biodiversity net gain's new exemptions are made but not yet in force.
Every number on this page names its source.
Not "industry estimates", not a consultancy's summary of a regulator's summary. The statutory instrument, the regulator's own guidance, or the department's own publication — named, dated and linked. Where a commonly-repeated figure turns out to be wrong, we say so rather than repeating it.
Three we corrected
Packaging EPR obligation begins at £1m turnover and 25 tonnes, not the £2m and 50 tonnes usually quoted — that is the large-producer threshold. Digital Waste Tracking is not yet mandatory. And ESOS's 95% coverage rule came in for Phase 3, not Phase 4.
One we would not publish
There is no confirmed packaging fee table for 2026–27. PackUK's illustrative Year 2 figures are banded and explicitly unconfirmed, so we quote them as illustrative or not at all.
One that has a date attached
TNFD's adopter count is 733 organisations — but that is a November 2025 figure, and it is the only one TNFD itself publishes. A larger number in circulation counts something else.
Independent guidance, positioned honestly.
We help UK organisations work out which environmental reporting duties apply to them, build the evidence those duties need, and file on time. That is the whole offer.
We are not a regulator and we hold no statutory appointment. We do not provide assurance or audit over sustainability or environmental information, and we hold no registration to do so. We do not give legal advice or accounting advice.
Nothing on this page is advice on your circumstances. Thresholds have exceptions, and several of the dates here are proposals that could change. Where an obligation carries legal consequence, take advice from someone qualified to give it and check the primary source yourself — we have linked all of them for that reason.
Scoping
Which regimes catch you, on today's thresholds, with the instrument behind each answer. Delivered as a written position you can hand to a board or an auditor.
Evidence
The measurement, records and retention each duty actually requires — usually less exotic and more specific than a software vendor will tell you.
Filing
Getting the return in, on the right form, by the right date, to the right regulator. Unglamorous, and the part that goes wrong most often.
Four areas we work in.
These are the four environmental domains where reporting duty, measurement difficulty and commercial consequence overlap most.
Biodiversity impact
Where development triggers biodiversity net gain, what the 10% is measured against, and how the thirty-year maintenance obligation is actually secured. Note that BNG is a planning condition rather than a reporting regime — it binds the development, not the annual report.
Water stewardship
Abstraction licensing above 20m³ a day, discharge permitting, trade effluent consent, and the metering and record-keeping conditions each carries. There is no general water reporting duty in the UK — the obligations are all permission-based.
Circular economy
Packaging producer responsibility, workplace waste separation, and waste movement tracking. Three separate regimes with three separate administrators, all landing on the same material flows.
The nexus
Where energy and carbon reporting meets nature — and where it does not. Includes the honest version of where nature-related disclosure currently stands in UK regulation, which is: nowhere mandatory.
The eight regimes in full.
Threshold, duty, deadline, regulator and source for each. Correct as at 27 July 2026.
1. SECR — Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting
Who: quoted companies, and large unquoted companies and LLPs meeting two of three tests — turnover at least £36m, balance sheet at least £18m, at least 250 employees.
Duty: energy use in kWh, greenhouse gas emissions in tCO₂e, at least one intensity ratio, energy efficiency action taken, methodology and prior-year comparatives — in the directors' report, annually.
Status: DESNZ's post-implementation review, published 26 May 2026, recommends retaining SECR with amendments; the formal recommendation is coded "Amend" and a streamlining consultation is planned. Note that SECR does not cover water, waste or nature, despite frequently being described as environmental reporting.
Source: The Companies (Directors' Report) and LLPs (Energy and Carbon Report) Regulations 2018 · DESNZ post-implementation review, 26 May 2026
2. ESOS — the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme
Who: UK undertakings with 250 or more employees, or turnover above £44m and balance sheet total above £38m.
Duty: a four-yearly energy audit covering at least 95% of total energy consumption, plus an action plan and progress reporting against it. Phase 4's qualification date is 31 December 2026 and the notification deadline is 5 December 2027. The action plan is due 5 December 2028, covering 6 December 2027 to 5 December 2031, with progress updates on 5 December 2029, 5 December 2030 and 5 December 2031.
New in Phase 4: report the energy savings actually achieved during the compliance period — measures implemented, kWh saved per measure and each measure's saving category, of which only the combined figure is published; review the previous action plan, identifying proposed measures not implemented and why; and file a third, final progress update. Two routes remain: the ESOS energy audit, and ISO 50001 covering total or significant consumption, which discharges the lead assessor, audit and report duties but not the notification.
Watch: the 95% coverage rule is a Phase 3 change that Phase 4 inherits, not a new Phase 4 requirement. Display Energy Certificates and Green Deal Assessments are removed as compliance routes: SI 2026/701 regulation 26 omits regulation 34 of the 2014 Regulations. The Environment Agency published the full Phase 4 guidance on 30 July 2026, so it is no longer pending. SI 2026/701 did not change the qualification thresholds, and alignment with SECR remains deferred to Phase 5.
Source: Environment Agency, Comply with ESOS phase 4, 30 July 2026 · SI 2026/701 · Environment Agency / DESNZ ESOS guidance
3. Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility
Who: obligation begins at £1m annual turnover and more than 25 tonnes of packaging supplied or imported. Large producers — £2m and more than 50 tonnes — additionally pay disposal fees and carry recycling obligations.
Duty: packaging data across eight material categories. Large producers report twice yearly, by 1 April and 1 October; small producers annually by 1 April.
Cost: confirmed 2025–26 base fees run from £192 a tonne for glass to £461 for fibre-based composite, with plastic at £423. Fee modulation starts in year two. There is no confirmed 2026–27 fee table yet.
Source: Defra / PackUK, who is affected · 2025 base fees · SI 2024/1332
4. Simpler Recycling — workplace waste separation
Who: all workplaces in England. Micro-firms of fewer than ten full-time-equivalent employees have until 31 March 2027.
Duty: separate dry recyclables, food waste and residual waste. Paper and card must be collected separately from plastic, metal and glass unless the collector completes a written assessment that separation is not technically or economically practicable, or brings no significant environmental benefit.
In force: 31 March 2025. Enforced by the Environment Agency.
Source: Defra / EA workplace recycling guidance · The Separation of Waste (England) Regulations 2025
5. Digital Waste Tracking
Status: public beta since 28 April 2026, voluntary. Mandatory for permitted waste receiving sites from October 2026 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and January 2027 in Scotland. Waste collectors follow from October 2027.
Note: it does not yet replace anything. Consignment notes, transfer notes, consignee returns and quarterly waste returns all continue in parallel during the transition. The service costs £26 a year.
6. Water — abstraction, discharge and trade effluent
Abstraction: a licence is required above 20 cubic metres a day, measured in aggregate across a continuous operation or series of operations from a source of supply — not per borehole. Most licences carry measurement and reporting conditions, with fines reaching £20,000 for failures.
Discharge: an environmental permit is required for a water discharge or groundwater activity. Trade effluent to sewer requires the undertaker's consent under the Water Industry Act 1991, which may impose metering and record-keeping.
Scotland differs: registration begins at 10 cubic metres a day and a licence above 50, under the Controlled Activities Regulations.
Source: Water Resources Act 1991 s.27 · Environment Agency abstraction guidance · Water Industry Act 1991 s.118
7. Environmental permitting and the Pollution Inventory
Who: operators of any of twelve classes of regulated facility — installations, mobile plant, waste operations, mining waste, radioactive substances, water discharge, groundwater, small waste incineration, solvent emission, flood risk, medium combustion plant and specified generators.
Duty: the Pollution Inventory return by 28 February each year, for the previous calendar year. Importantly, the duty is triggered by a regulation 61(1) information notice rather than by holding a permit — a Part A(1) permit alone does not create it.
Cost: subsistence charges are multiplied by your compliance band, from 95% at band A to 300% at band F.
Source: Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016, reg. 8 · EA general guidance, pollution inventory reporting · EA compliance classification scheme
8. Biodiversity net gain
Who: most development in England granted planning permission. In force since 12 February 2024.
Duty: a 10% measurable gain in biodiversity value, secured and maintained for at least 30 years.
Changing: from 6 August 2026 a new 0.2 hectare exemption applies where no on-site priority habitat is affected, temporary permissions of up to five years become exempt, and the self-build exemption is removed. Applications made before that date are grandfathered. Biodiversity net gain for nationally significant infrastructure applies from November 2026.
Source: Environment Act 2021, Schedule 14 · SI 2026/790 · Defra guidance
What to ask an environmental reporting supplier.
Six questions that separate a supplier who knows the regimes from one selling a dashboard. We would expect to answer all six ourselves, in writing, before any engagement.
1. Which instrument?
For every duty they say applies to you, ask which statutory instrument or regulator guidance sets it. A supplier who cannot name it is repeating someone else's summary.
2. Threshold or judgement?
Some scope tests are arithmetic and some are qualitative. A good answer distinguishes them and tells you which of yours are marginal.
3. What is proposed vs law?
Anyone describing UK SRS as mandatory today, or Digital Waste Tracking as already required, is working from a press release rather than the source.
4. Who assures it?
Ask explicitly whether they provide assurance and under what registration. Most environmental consultancies, including this one, do not and cannot.
5. What happens at inspection?
Reporting duties are tested by regulator inspection, not by the quality of a PDF. Ask what evidence they will leave you holding.
6. What is out of scope?
A supplier who says everything applies to you has not done the scoping. The useful deliverable is usually a shorter list than you expected.
Where the standards work lives.
SRS Green covers environmental duty — permits, packaging, waste, water and land. The sustainability reporting standards themselves, and the carbon and energy side, are covered in depth on our sister sites rather than duplicated here.
Sustainability Reporting Standards
UK SRS S1 and S2 in full, the implementation timeline, and the consultancy side.
Frequently asked.
Work that establishes which environmental duties apply to an organisation, builds the measurement and records those duties require, and files the resulting returns with the right regulator by the right date. In the UK that spans at least eight separate regimes, most of which sit outside sustainability reporting standards entirely.
Parts of it, yes. SECR, ESOS, packaging producer responsibility, workplace waste separation, permit returns and abstraction licensing all carry legal obligations today. Sustainability and nature-related disclosure is a different matter — UK SRS is currently voluntary, and the FCA's proposal to make S2 mandatory for listed issuers has not yet been finalised.
Not as a topic standard. UK SRS S2 is climate-only. UK SRS S1 is a general standard that captures nature-related risks where they are financially material, and it points preparers to the CDSB application guidance for biodiversity and for water, but there is no UK nature or biodiversity standard. Under the FCA's proposals, non-climate disclosure would be comply-or-explain with relief until 2029. A nature standard depends on the ISSB, whose exposure draft is targeted for October 2026.
The obligation begins at £1 million annual turnover and more than 25 tonnes of packaging supplied or imported in the previous calendar year — both must apply, alongside carrying out a packaging activity. The widely quoted £2 million and 50 tonnes is the large-producer threshold, which adds disposal fees and recycling obligations on top of data reporting. Firms between the two are obligated small producers who must register and report.
Above 20 cubic metres a day in England and Wales, yes. The threshold applies in aggregate across a continuous operation or series of operations from a source of supply, which is a common trap — it is not a per-borehole allowance. Scotland works differently, with registration from 10 cubic metres a day and a licence above 50.
No. TNFD is voluntary everywhere in the UK. Defra considered making it mandatory following its call for evidence on private-sector nature recovery and did not commit to doing so. TNFD has itself said it will pause new technical guidance and support the ISSB's nature standard-setting work instead.
On 6 August 2026. New exemptions arrive for developments affecting no more than 0.2 hectares with no on-site priority habitat, and for temporary permissions of up to five years; the self-build and custom-build exemption is removed. Applications made before that date are grandfathered. A good deal of commentary gives the date as 31 July 2026 — the statutory instrument says 6 August.
No. We hold no statutory audit or assurance registration and provide no assurance opinion. Where a duty requires independent verification we will tell you so and help you prepare for it, but the verification itself has to come from someone registered to give it.