Post # 94
November 5, 2025
Hilary Eastman
This month, guest blogger Hilary welcomes long-awaited developments in sustainability reporting, as they inch towards the finish line…
Long before the ISSB was a glint in the IFRS Foundation’s eye, I remember Hans Hoogervorst, then chair of the International Accounting Standards Board, giving a speech in Cambridge about sustainability reporting. Amongst other things, he talked about what sustainability reporting can and can’t do, and the (limited) role that IFRS accounting standards can play in that. It’s well worth a read. Even back then in 2019, there were calls for the IFRS Foundation to cut through the alphabet soup of sustainability reporting, and use its global standard-setting experience and due process to make this information more rigorous and relevant to capital market decision-making.
Fast forward six years, and while it’s fair to say there’s even more alphabet in the soup, there’s been significant progress made to up the game of sustainability reporting. We now have the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), under the IFRS Foundation umbrella, bringing that rigour and relevance through its IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards.
Global adoption of these standards can’t come soon enough. Having been a valuation professional in a previous life, I’ve come to see sustainability as a series of issues that need to be factored into investment analysis and pricing models. But it’s not done consistently, and there’s no general agreement on how to do it. A large part of what hinders this is the lack of meaningful, comparable and consistent information about sustainability. We also rarely get a clear explanation of how and why it matters to the company in question – though of course, Falcon Windsor can help with this!
That’s all set to change as the ISSB’s standards get adopted around the world. And it’s exciting to see the UK making progress too, even if can feel like a snail’s pace at times. In June the Government published a public consultation on the UK versions of the two ISSB standards, with only a few deviations from the ISSB’s versions. They are now reviewing the responses and expect to publish the endorsed UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS) in the coming months. The FCA will soon consult on UK SRS’s application to listed companies, potentially coming into force as soon as 2027. Private companies will be brought into scope later.
It’s a challenge to keep up with the changing landscape of sustainability reporting in the UK, so I’ve summarised it here (clients of Falcon Windsor will already have received a copy). I’ve also covered the recent proposals on climate transition plans and sustainability assurance.
The snail seems to be stepping up a gear.
Disclosure – I am a member of the UK Sustainability Disclosure Technical Advisory Committee, which is the body that provides the UK Government with technical advice on the endorsement of the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards. All views are my own.