Collect energy data from every site, calculate emissions on current DEFRA factors, and produce the energy and carbon section of your Directors’ Report with the working still attached. The same dataset feeds ESOS, UK SRS and CDP.
Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting is the UK’s mandatory energy and carbon disclosure regime. It came from the Companies (Directors’ Report) and Limited Liability Partnerships (Energy and Carbon Report) Regulations 2018, replaced the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, and has applied to financial years starting on or after 1 April 2019. Around 19,900 UK organisations are in scope, according to DESNZ’s 2026 Post-Implementation Review, which found 76% more companies and LLPs caught than the 11,300 forecast when the regime was designed.
If you are caught, you disclose energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, at least one intensity ratio, the energy efficiency measures you took during the year, and the methodology behind the numbers. It goes in the Directors’ Report, or in an Energy and Carbon Report for an LLP, filed with your annual accounts.
Three groups report: quoted companies regardless of size, large unquoted companies, and large LLPs. What “large” means for SECR is not what it means for your accounts, and that gap has caught companies out since April 2025.
SECR sets its own size test, and it has not moved since 2019. Meet two of three — turnover above £36 million, balance sheet total above £18 million, more than 250 employees on a monthly average — and you report.
In April 2025 the Companies Act size thresholds were raised by roughly half. Large now starts at £54 million turnover and £27 million balance sheet. That change came through SI 2024/1303, and it did not touch the SECR thresholds in Schedule 7 to the 2008 accounts regulations.
So a company with turnover between £36 million and £54 million can be medium-sized for its accounts and a SECR reporter in the same financial year. Both tests apply. They can give opposite answers. A reclassification letter from your auditor is not a reason to drop the energy and carbon section.
Three exemptions exist. Organisations using 40,000 kWh or less across the reporting period file a statement rather than the full disclosure. Directors can withhold information they judge seriously prejudicial to the organisation’s interests. And where information is not practical to obtain, that has to be stated along with what was done to try. First-year reporters are not required to provide comparatives. Everyone else is.
SECR is an annual scramble for most teams. Someone emails eleven site managers in November, seven reply, two send a PDF of a bill, and the rest gets estimated in the last week before the accounts are signed. The number that ends up in the Directors’ Report is defensible right up until somebody asks where it came from.
Credibl connects to the sources directly and chases the ones that cannot be connected.
The UK government publishes greenhouse gas conversion factors annually, usually in June. Apply last year’s factors to this year’s data and the number is wrong in a way nobody will catch until an assurance provider does. Apply them without recording which version you used and next year’s restatement becomes an archaeology project.
Credibl stores the factor version alongside every calculation, so when the update lands you can see which figures move and by how much.
Most companies in SECR scope are also in ESOS, and a growing number are preparing for UK SRS. Run separately, they collect the same energy data three times and reconcile it never. Someone eventually notices that the SECR figure and the CDP submission disagree, and the finance team spends three weeks working out which one is wrong.
Credibl maps each figure once and reuses it. Restate a prior year and every disclosure drawing on it moves together.
No, and it is worth being clear about this because the two are often discussed as if one is the successor to the other.
SECR sits in the Companies Act and applies to roughly 19,900 organisations, most of them large unquoted companies and LLPs with no listing. UK SRS S1 and S2 were published by DBT on 25 February 2026 for voluntary use, and the FCA has proposed making S2 mandatory for around 515 listed companies from January 2027. Different legal instrument, different population, both in force at once.
For the great majority of SECR reporters, UK SRS is not an obligation and may never become one. For quoted companies, both will apply. DESNZ has said it will look at how the two interact with a view to reducing duplication, and it ran a call for evidence on adding Scope 3 to UK greenhouse gas reporting and published a summary of responses. Neither has produced a change to the regime. Until one does, the practical answer is to hold one dataset and report from it twice.
In May 2026 DESNZ completed its statutory review of SECR and recommended keeping it, with targeted amendments to reduce duplication and improve coherence with the rest of the reporting landscape. The review put the benefit-cost ratio at 2.72. A consultation on those amendments has not opened. For planning purposes, SECR is a regime the government has just examined and decided to retain, not one being wound down.
See our UK SRS reporting software →SECR is not intellectually difficult. It is administratively exhausting: chasing a site manager for a gas reading, matching fuel card transactions to vehicles, checking whether last quarter’s spike was a real event or a misread meter.
Your team reviews decisions. It stops doing data entry.
Collects and validates energy data across sites and suppliers.
Tracks regulatory change and interrogates the data behind every figure.
Runs the emissions calculations and factor matching.
Drafts disclosure narrative, including the energy efficiency section.
Runs the checks before anything goes to your auditor.
Entities tested against the SECR thresholds rather than the accounts thresholds, group boundary agreed, filing route confirmed for any LLPs.
Meters, supplier portals, fleet, expense and finance systems connected. Prior year loaded for comparatives.
Gaps identified by site and fuel, data requests issued with owners and deadlines, estimation approach agreed for what will not close.
Scope 1 and 2 calculated on current versioned factors, intensity ratio denominator agreed, anomalies resolved.
Directors’ Report tables generated with methodology statement and efficiency narrative drafted from what actually happened during the year.
Same dataset pushed to ESOS, UK SRS S2, CDP or ESRS E1 without a second collection cycle.
Bring your last Directors’ Report, your site list and your worst data source. We’ll show you what the disclosure looks like when every figure has its working attached.
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