SECR, and the 19,900 organisations inside it
SECR is the UK’s mandatory energy and carbon disclosure, filed inside the directors’ report every financial year since SI 2018/1155 came into force in April 2019.
The government’s own 2026 review puts 19,900 organisations in scope — not the “~11,900” that still circulates everywhere — and estimates that between 14% and 23% of them are not complying.
See what your disclosure must contain Computes from your entity type · nothing leaves your browserSECR, in one paragraph
Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting is the annual disclosure large UK organisations put inside their own directors’ report.
It requires total energy use in kWh, Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions in tCO2e, at least one intensity ratio, the methodology used, prior-year comparatives from the second year on, and a narrative of energy-efficiency actions.
It is not a certificate, not a standalone filing, and not audited in the way a set of accounts is audited — it is a section of a document you already file.
It has applied to financial years beginning on or after 1 April 2019, under SI 2018/1155.
19,900 organisations file this every year. Here is what it actually asks of them.
19,900 organisations, not ~11,900
The figure that circulates everywhere is wrong, and DESNZ has now said so directly.
Three groups, one test
SECR catches three kinds of organisation, and the same two-of-three test has not moved since 2019.
These thresholds were not changed by the April 2025 Companies Act size-limit uplift [3] — a company can now be “medium” for audit purposes and still be “large” for SECR.
What “SECR compliance” actually means
There is no SECR pass mark, no SECR certificate and no SECR audit sign-off — compliance is a filing obligation, discharged inside a document you already produce.
You comply by including all six mandatory elements — energy, Scope 1–2, intensity ratio, methodology, comparatives, narrative — in the directors’ report (or the energy and carbon report, for an LLP) for the relevant financial year.
Machine-read evidence from Companies House accounts finds 67% of entities that should report in their own accounts had Scope 1 and at least one Scope 2 figure detected — a number the review itself says likely understates true reporting, because image-based PDF filings are hard to read automatically [1].
The business survey suggests 77% to 86% of in-scope firms report compliance [1][2].
Between one in seven and one in four are not complying
The government’s own review puts non-compliance at 14% to 23% of the 19,900 in scope — a range it renders as a range, not a single number.
The gap is “more prevalent among private companies and LLPs” than among quoted companies, the review says — without publishing a number for the split [1].
Three ways of measuring the same population, and why they disagree
14–23% is not one measurement — it is a triangulation of three sources, each with a stated coverage, a stated ability to assess compliance, and a stated direction of bias.
The review triangulates them rather than picking one, which is why the conclusion is a band and not a point estimate [1][2].
Enforcement is real, and it is described as “light-touch”
SECR sits inside the directors’ report, so the same Companies House and FRC mechanisms that police the rest of the annual report apply to it.
Interviewees for the 2026 evaluation described enforcement as “light-touch”, and the review notes this is less effective for the wider private-company and LLP cohort, where compliance gaps are more prevalent [1][2].
FRC Corporate Reporting Review can query a directors’ report that omits a required disclosure, in the same way it can query any other misstatement in the strategic report.
There is no SECR-specific penalty regime and no SECR-specific regulator — the consequence of a missing disclosure runs through ordinary company-law mechanisms.
2019 to the 2026 review, in order
Seven years of a settled regime, then two documents in 2026 that changed what can honestly be said about it.
“Retained, with amendments” — and nothing is decided yet
The review’s recommendation is to keep SECR and refine it, not to replace it.
Five areas are named as candidates for the planned consultation, and the review is explicit that none of them is a decision: updating guidance on eligibility thresholds, site inclusion and group boundaries; a standardised disclosure template; aligning definitions with ISSB, CSRD and TCFD; light-touch forward-looking elements such as optional targets; and digital access options for usability [1].
Stakeholders told the review that the lack of a prescribed template has caused “inconsistency in the placement and format of SECR reports” and adds to the learning curve for new reporters [1].
The consultation has not opened. Nothing here is a settled change to SECR, and nothing on this page states one as though it were.
What gets published, against what actually changes
SECR moves data into the public domain more reliably than it moves behaviour.
Stakeholders describe SECR’s biggest effect as standardisation and comparability, not new information — a “single, predictable route for public disclosure” within statutory reports, rather than a lever that reliably reduces energy use on its own [1].
What goes in the disclosure, plainly
Every SECR disclosure carries the same six elements, whatever the entity type.
Quoted companies report these globally; large unquoted companies and LLPs report UK energy, plus the Scope 3 emissions arising from grey-fleet transport.
The intensity ratio is the element reporters find hardest
Most respondents found energy use, Scope 1–2 and the efficiency narrative straightforward to compile — intensity ratios and Scope 3 data were the exceptions [1].
SECR does not prescribe a denominator: per employee, per unit of revenue, per square metre, per tonne produced are all legitimate choices, and different reporters pick different ones.
The review names this directly as a comparability problem: it is “hampered by heterogeneous intensity metrics”, varied calculation choices, limited verification, and inconsistent placement and formatting [1] — which is exactly what makes benchmarking one company’s ratio against another’s difficult.
A standardised template, one of the five candidate amendments, is aimed squarely at this problem — but it is not decided.
Under 40 MWh, you state it — you do not omit it
Low energy users may make a statement instead of the full six-element disclosure, but the statement is mandatory.
An organisation consuming less than 40 MWh (40,000 kWh) in the reporting period may state that fact instead of disclosing the six elements in full.
Subsidiaries already covered by a UK parent’s consolidated SECR disclosure do not report separately.
Narrow “seriously prejudicial” and “not practical to obtain” exemptions exist too, but every route requires an explicit statement — silently dropping the SECR section is non-compliant, whether or not you would have qualified for an exemption.
SECR has no deadline of its own
There is no SECR filing date — the disclosure is filed as part of the annual report and accounts, so it inherits the Companies House filing deadline.
That is nine months after the financial year end for a private company, and six months for a public company.
A December year-end private company therefore files its SECR disclosure by the end of the following September — the same date as the rest of the annual report.
“When is the SECR deadline” is the wrong question — the right one is “when do my accounts fall due”.
SECR audit and certification — neither exists as such
There is no SECR-specific audit and no SECR certificate to obtain.
The energy and emissions figures sit inside the strategic report or directors’ report, which is subject to the auditor’s ordinary duty to check the narrative is consistent with the financial statements — not a separate assurance opinion on the SECR figures themselves.
The review found limited verification is itself part of why comparability is hard [1] — there is no consistent third-party check that two companies’ intensity ratios were calculated the same way.
Voluntary third-party assurance over the underlying data exists and some organisations buy it, but it is not a SECR requirement.
What your SECR disclosure must contain
Pick your entity type and your energy use, and see exactly which elements apply to you and where they legally sit.
An order of work, not a score
There is no SECR score — there is a filing you either complete correctly or do not.
First, confirm which of the three groups you are in and whether the two-of-three test is met for the relevant financial year.
Second, gather the six elements against the boundary that applies to you — global for quoted companies, UK-plus-grey-fleet for large unquoted companies and LLPs.
Third, choose an intensity ratio denominator and keep it consistent year to year, because the comparative requirement depends on it.
Fourth, if energy use is under 40 MWh, make the exemption statement explicitly — never omit the section silently.
Fifth, file it inside the directors’ report (or energy and carbon report, for an LLP) on the ordinary Companies House timetable.
Six elements, one filing, no separate deadline. The rest is who owns which term.
SECR covers 19,900 organisations, not 11,900, and the gap between what is filed and what is complied with is the thing worth checking first.
Six things worth remembering
If you have not checked whether you are in the 19,900 rather than the old ~11,900, that is the first thing to fix.
Check the requirements and exemptions Or read the full reporting guideStreamlined energy and carbon reporting, in full
“Streamlined energy and carbon reporting” is SECR’s full name, and the long-form guide to it — the regime’s economics, its full history, and the complete cost–benefit picture — lives on a dedicated page.
That page carries the DESNZ evaluation’s cost and benefit findings in full: a mean ongoing cost of £7,100 per complier per year (94 hours of internal staff time, about £2,500, plus external costs for the 56% who incur them), against £8.1bn in monetised benefits 2019–2025 and a benefit–cost ratio of 2.72.
SECR requirements and exemptions, in full
The complete requirements page covers every disclosure element, every exemption route and every qualifying threshold in depth, including the boundary between quoted and unquoted reporting and the de minimis statement in full.
A SECR report template and worked example
A worked example showing the six elements laid out as they would appear in a real directors’ report, plus a template you can adapt, lives on its own page.
ESOS and SECR — different regimes, shared data
SECR is annual public disclosure in the directors’ report. ESOS is a four-yearly energy audit scheme run by the Environment Agency, with findings notified privately.
They use different qualification tests, so an organisation can be in scope for one and not the other — and ESOS audit outputs are a natural source for the SECR energy-efficiency narrative.
SECR reporting software and tools
A comparison of platforms that support SECR data collection and disclosure, assessed against what each one actually does rather than a vendor’s own description of it, lives on a dedicated page.
SECR consultants and specialist help
56% of compliers report incurring external costs — consultancies or auditors — as part of their ongoing SECR compliance [2].
Guides to choosing external support sit on the consultant pages below.
TCFD and UK SRS S2 — where SECR data goes next
SECR continues alongside UK SRS as a separate annual obligation — DBT confirmed this to the FCA in January 2026 [4].
UK SRS S2 is the climate disclosure standard the FCA proposes to make mandatory for around 515 listed companies; the Scope 1 and 2 data companies already produce for SECR is the foundation of the emissions metrics S2 requires.
Key facts, at a glance
Methodology: HM Government’s Environmental Reporting Guidelines, emissions calculated using the DESNZ greenhouse gas conversion factors 2026 and the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard.
A dedicated SECR reference site, secr.quest, covers deadlines, thresholds and the SECR-to-UK-SRS transition in more depth than fits here.