Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP)
From 1 January 2026, the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) creates new ESG disclosure expectations for charities.
What is SORP?
The SORP gives an accounting and reporting framework to UK charities. The Charities SORP has been recently updated, and SORP 2026 will apply to reporting periods starting on or after 1 January 2026.
The key changes include:
- Three new tiers to ensure reporting is more proportionate to the charity’s size:
- Tier 1: Income up to £500,000.
- Tier 2: Income between £500,000 and £15 million.
- Tier 3: Income over £15 million.
- Social investments – simplified accounting and reporting requirements.
- Provisions and contingencies – ‘easier to understand’ reporting requirements.
What are your sustainability reporting requirements as part of SORP 2026?
Tier 3 charities must summarise how the charity is responding to and managing ESG matters. For example, this could include:
- Details of the key performance indicators used to assess progress against targets to manage climate-related risks and realise climate-related opportunities.
- Description of the calculations these key performance indicators are based on.
- Social matters may include information on employee engagement and wellbeing, board diversity and inclusion and how a charity supports its local community.
- Governance matters may include details of privacy, cyber security, data security and business ethics.
- Where the charity is already reporting on these matters, but the detail is not included in the trustees’ annual report, details on where to find the information should be included, for example, via a website link.
For Tier 1 and 2 charities, trustees reporting on how the charity is responding to and managing environmental, governance and social matters is currently voluntary.
How can Inspired help you?
Applying for grant funding and bidding for contracts are increasingly competitive spaces. Lack of sustainability reporting could impact your funding eligibility – especially from the government or ESG-conscious investors.
While the new SORP sustainability reporting requirements are currently mandatory for Tier 3 charities only, today’s voluntary reporting is the mandatory reporting of tomorrow.
Powerful disclosures help your charity to stand up to stakeholder scrutiny and set you apart from your peers when applying for funding.
Key deliverables
Climate-scenario analysis
We analyse physical climate-related risks and opportunities across your operations, such as flooding.
Governance structure
We can help you develop full climate governance structures, how climate change will be managed, reviewed, and signed-off.
Scopes 1,2 and 3 reporting
We can work with stakeholders to identify and quantify all applicable Scope 3 emissions.
Net zero strategy
Develop targets supported by a robust, data-driven strategy, with short, medium, and long-term actions.
ESG assessment
A gap analysis to determine your organisation’s alignment with regulations, international standards, and frameworks, pinpointing the gaps impacting your ESG strategy.
(Following this analysis, we can also create an integrated ESG report as a separate service.)
Talk to an expert
Phillip Parrott
ESG Manager
“Inspired can ensure your reporting stands up to scrutiny and creates advantages beyond compliance.
Your charity may find it challenging to dedicate internal resources towards gathering the necessary data and drafting your disclosures. This is where Inspired can help – we can support your team with data collection and help you create accurate and impactful disclosures.”
Inspired’s approach to ESG disclosures
With our comprehensive ESG disclosure service, Inspired can support your charity in meeting your unique reporting requirements.
The foundation of our service offering is making your disclosure process as simple and streamlined as possible by integrating ESG into existing operations. Our robust and hands-on data collection process ensures we provide accurate, extensive, consistent and auditable disclosures.
As ESG reporting is a diverse space, we follow best international practices to ensure consistency and transparency throughout all our deliverables.
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With our comprehensive ESG disclosure service, Inspired can support your charity in meeting your unique reporting requirements.