UK Sustainability Disclosure Requirements — the guide to UK SDR

UK SDR in one paragraph

UK Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (UK SDR)is the UK Government’s umbrella policy package for sustainability-related disclosure — not a single rule or standard.

The Government’s own implementation update confirms UK SDR is broader than UK SRS: it includes UK SRS itself, the FCA’s SDR investment product labels, transition plan requirements, and the ISSA (UK) 5000 assurance standard.1

In other words, the guide to sustainability disclosure requirements in the UK is really a guide to four separate but connected regimes, each with its own regulator, scope, and timeline.

The rest of this page works through what UK sustainability disclosure standards actually require, component by component, and who each one affects.

UK SDR vs UK SRS — the distinction that matters

The single most common confusion in this space is treating UK SDR and UK SRS as the same thing. They are not.1

UK SRS — the UK Sustainability Reporting Standards — is a specific pair of corporate disclosure standards (S1 and S2) published by the Department for Business and Trade on 25 February 2026.2

It tells companies what to disclose about sustainability and climate matters.

UK SDR is the wider policy label covering that disclosure requirement plus three further strands of regulation: how investment products are labelled and marketed, how transition plans are disclosed, and how any of this gets independently assured.1

The four components of UK SDR

The Government’s implementation update sets out UK SDR as covering four linked strands of policy.1 The table below maps each to what it covers and who administers it.

No single regulator owns all four components.

DBT publishes the UK SRS standards; the FCA applies them to listed companies and separately runs the investment-label regime; the FRC publishes the assurance standard.1236

Component 1 — UK SRS, the corporate disclosure standards

UK SRS S1 and S2 are the corporate sustainability and climate disclosure standards published by DBT on 25 February 2026, based on the global IFRS S1 and S2 baseline with UK-specific amendments.2

The FCA’s CP26/5 consultation proposes mandatory application of UK SRS S2 from 1 January 2027 for listed companies in UK Listing Rules categories 6, 14, 15, 16 and 22.3

That consultation closed on 20 March 2026, with an FCA Policy Statement expected in autumn 2026.3

For the full detail on what UK SRS requires and who must comply, see the dedicated what is UK SRS guide — this page focuses on how UK SRS sits inside the wider UK SDR package.

Component 2 — FCA SDR investment product labels

The second component is the FCA’s own SDR regime for investment products — a separate rulebook from UK SRS, aimed at asset managers, life insurers, and FCA-regulated pension providers rather than corporate reporters.4

It introduces sustainable investment product labels and an anti-greenwashing rule governing how sustainability-related terms can be used in fund names and marketing.45

See the dedicated FCA Sustainability Disclosure Requirements guide for the product-labelling framework, entity-level disclosure obligations, and anti-greenwashing guidance in full.

Component 3 — transition plan requirements

The third component covers transition plans — disclosure of whether, and how, an organisation has published a plan describing its route to a lower-carbon business model.1

Within UK SRS S2, this currently works on a disclose-or-explain basis: companies state whether a transition plan has been published, where it can be found, and its key elements, rather than being required to produce one from scratch.2

See transition plans under UK SRS for the full disclose-or-explain mechanics and the TPT framework it draws on.

Transition plan policy is being developed separately from the UK SRS standards themselves, which is exactly why it counts as its own UK SDR component rather than a sub-clause of UK SRS.1

Component 4 — ISSA (UK) 5000 assurance

The fourth component is independent assurance. ISSA (UK) 5000

is the FRC’s sustainability assurance standard, published 12 November 2025 and effective for periods beginning on or after 15 December 2026.6

It sets out how a practitioner provides limited or reasonable assurance over sustainability disclosures — most relevantly, over UK SRS reports once assurance becomes part of market practice.6

FCA CP26/5 does not itself mandate assurance.3

See ISSA (UK) 5000 explained for the limited-vs-reasonable distinction and how the standard applies in practice.

Who is affected, and by which component

Because UK SDR spans four regimes, “are we in scope for UK SDR” is rarely a single yes-or-no answer. It helps to ask the question per component.

• Listed companies in UK Listing Rules categories 6, 14, 15, 16 and 22 — in scope for proposed mandatory UK SRS S2 from 1 January 20273
• Asset managers, life insurers, and FCA-regulated pension providers offering retail investment products — in scope for the FCA SDR investment label regime4
• Any entity making sustainability-related marketing claims about a product — subject to the FCA’s anti-greenwashing rule regardless of whether it uses a formal label5
• Companies that have published, or plan to publish, a climate transition plan — subject to disclose-or-explain expectations under UK SRS S22
• Assurance providers and their clients — working to ISSA (UK) 5000 once mandatory or voluntary assurance engagements begin6

SECR and UK SRS continue as separate obligations, confirmed in DBT’s 5 January 2026 letter to the FCA — a reminder that UK sustainability regulation generally runs as several coexisting regimes rather than one consolidated rulebook, and UK SDR is the clearest example of that pattern.7

Sustainability disclosure software

Because UK SDR spans policy, marketing, and assurance strands as well as corporate reporting, no single software category covers all four components.

Carbon and ESG reporting platforms address the data layer behind the UK SRS component — activity-data capture, emission-factor application, and multi-framework reporting outputs.2

The FCA SDR investment-label and transition-plan components are largely governance and disclosure-drafting exercises rather than data-collection problems, so they are typically supported by advisory input rather than dedicated software.

For platforms relevant to the reporting-standards component specifically, see our sustainability reporting software comparison.

Frequently asked questions