Post # 100
May 6, 2026
Claire Bodanis
Claire was hoping to give her take on the DBT’s Modernisation of Corporate Reporting Review consultation in this month’s blog, but it hasn’t landed yet. Nonetheless, we thought you might find a status update useful.
I do feel sorry for our friends at the Department for Business & Trade (DBT) – they’ve had their lovely Modernisation of Corporate Reporting (MCR) review* ready to go for months now. But with zillions of cooks from other Government departments all sticking their wooden spoons in, it’s hardly surprising we haven’t seen it yet. Sounds rather like an annual report, actually – but at least that has a legal deadline!
So, what do we know? Since we last wrote on this subject at the beginning of March, we’ve heard the following:
Scope – the consultation does, we believe, include proposals for all parts of the annual report – strategic report, governance report, financials; a proposal for codifying the purpose (hurray); something on simplifying thresholds; and some questions on digital and AI.
Launch date – it might come out in mid-late May, but it may well not be til June now, depending on whose runes you read.
Consultation period – we understand the consultation is likely to be open for 12 weeks.
Discussing the consultation – please do join an FW/CGI session
On the positive side, the delay means it’ll be easier for our March year-end colleagues to take part in the consultation and give their feedback, since it now looks like their reports will have published before we get the consultation itself!
As we announced in our March blog, we’ll be running a couple of corporate sessions to gather feedback for the DBT in partnership with our friends at the Chartered Governance Institute (CGI), to make sure the essential view of report preparers is heard. We had a planning session with the DBT and the CGI in late March, so are ready to go once the consultation is launched. We’ll need a few weeks to read and analyse the consultation document before running the sessions (rumour has it, it’s not short!), so they’ll probably take place about a month after it comes out.
Many of you have already signed up to take part (thank you very much), but if you haven’t yet, please do contact my colleague Alex Brady (alex@falconwindsor.com) so we can add you to the list, pending dates being agreed.
Our chance to rethink reporting for the better
If you’ve been a blog reader for a while, you’ll know that late last year, we came up with our own new model for corporate reporting for the age of AI, and submitted it to the DBT, who, we understand, have used some aspects of it in their own thinking. As I wrote in its introduction, we believe that the MCR is a genuine opportunity to rethink reporting for the better. And, if it’s as ambitious as it sounds, we’ll doubtless be living with the results for a very long time. The more of you who take part, the better those results will be, so please do keep the faith and join in when it finally comes out!
* What is the Modernisation of Corporate Reporting review? Here’s a reminder of what the MCR is all about. Last year, the UK Government resurrected its Non-Financial Reporting Review and consulted widely (including interviewing me) on how to improve corporate reporting. To quote their October email to stakeholders, “Throughout our engagement, it became apparent that the issues with the [reporting] framework went beyond non-financial reporting. Therefore, we are expanding the scope to include financial, remuneration, and governance reporting, as well as considering how reporting can be modernised in the digital age.”
The reason for all this is that the UK Government’s growth agenda relies on London regenerating itself as a centre for capital and the UK attracting inward investment. And many see deregulation – or at least the simplification of regulation – as a necessary backdrop for growth. To quote Blair McDougall MP, Minister for Small Business and Economic Transformation, in his letter (dropping the plans for audit reform!) to the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee in January: “We want to make the UK’s reporting regime the most streamlined and proportionate in the world, and will launch an ambitious consultation this year to co-design these changes with companies and investors.”
You can find the full paper from October here.