UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS): What Hoteliers Need to Know

UK SRS is a set of rules for how a company should report its sustainability performance, covering things like energy use, waste and climate risk, alongside its usual financial reporting. The UK adapted them from a global standard used by many countries, called the ISSB standards. The Department for Business and Trade published the final UK version on 25 February 2026 (GOV.UK, 25 February 2026).

The rules come in two parts, named UK SRS S1 and UK SRS S2, covered below. For a hotel operator, the practical takeaway is that UK SRS should feel familiar if you’ve already seen sustainability reporting from a listed parent company or international brand, since it follows the same global template.

What is UK SRS S1?

UK SRS S1 covers the broad picture: how a company is run, what sustainability risks and opportunities it faces, and how it measures and tracks them. It’s not limited to climate; it also covers water use, waste and social impact.

What is UK SRS S2?

UK SRS S2 covers climate specifically. It sets out how a company should report its carbon emissions and other climate-related risks, and is used alongside UK SRS S1.

The government has said it will separately look at extending UK SRS to private companies one day, as part of a wider reform programme (Linklaters, March 2026). No decision has been made on that yet, so it isn’t in the table above.

Nobody has to report under UK SRS today. UK-listed companies must report or explain why not, for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027 (FCA, PS26/19, September 2026).

The FCA’s rules cover specific types of listed companies, broadly the UK’s main and secondary stock market listings (FCA, PS26/19, September 2026). It’s a small, clearly defined group, and it does not include unlisted hotel groups, independent hotels, or most hospitality management companies.

Are small and independent hotels in scope?

No, not directly, and probably not for years. The companies in scope are all publicly listed businesses. An independent hotel or a small regional group has no legal duty to produce a UK SRS report under the FCA’s rules.

But being out of scope doesn’t mean you won’t feel it. The next section explains why.

Large companies will report emissions they don’t directly control, including their supply chain: under the FCA’s rules this Scope 3 reporting starts in 2028 on a comply-or-explain basis, one year after the climate rules themselves. That’s the reason hotels get pulled into this, even without reporting themselves: the listed company at the top asks its suppliers for data, and those suppliers ask their own suppliers, until the request reaches everyone involved.

The scale of the issue becomes clear once you look at where a hotel group’s emissions actually come from. At IHG, one of the world’s largest hotel groups, Scope 3 made up 61% of reported group emissions in 2025, against 6% for Scope 1 and 33% for Scope 2 (IHG, 2025 ESG Databook). In other words, most of a large hotel group’s carbon footprint comes from the goods and services it buys, not from its own buildings. Amenities and cosmetics suppliers are part of that picture.

The same pressure is building from several directions at once:

• Corporate travel buyers: In a 2023 survey by the Global Business Travel Association, 92% of business travel professionals said sustainability was a priority for their organisation, up from 89% the year before (GBTA, The State of Climate Action in Business Travel, June 2023).
• Banks and lenders: More finance providers are asking for ESG data, and those requests are passed down supply chains. Research from the British Business Bank found that SMEs asked for carbon data by a customer or as part of a tender in the past year were nearly four times more likely to treat net zero as a high priority (British Business Bank, October 2025).
• Guests, as background pressure: In Booking.com’s 2025 Travel and Sustainability Report, 84% of travellers said travelling more sustainably remained important to them, a figure that has climbed steadily over the past decade (Hospitality Net, 23 April 2025).

None of these three groups need UK SRS to exist for their expectations to matter. UK SRS gives the largest buyers in your supply chain a standard set of questions to ask, rather than each one asking something different.

The good news is that none of this preparation requires you to become a UK SRS reporter yourself. It just means being ready to answer the people who are.

1. Work out where you stand now: Measure your energy, water and waste use today. You can’t show progress, or answer a data request, without a starting point.
2. Give one person the job: Pick a senior person to own your hotel’s sustainability data. That way, when a partner or buyer has a question, there’s one clear person to ask.
3. Start collecting supplier information: Ask your key suppliers for their certifications, carbon figures and sustainability ratings now. This kind of evidence takes the longest to gather, so an early start pays off.
4. Keep your green claims honest: Since April 2025, the Competition and Markets Authority can fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover for misleading environmental claims under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (Fieldfisher, 1 May 2025). Anything your hotel says publicly about sustainability needs to be true and backed up (Reed Smith, 7 August 2025).
5. Check the FCA’s final rules: They were published in September 2026. Look at what they mean for you, especially if you’re part of a group, franchise or brand family, since that’s how the rules could affect you indirectly.

The easiest way to answer a Scope 3 data request is to work with suppliers who already have the answers ready.

We at ADA Cosmetics publish an annual sustainability report, hold EcoVadis Gold, and our core product range is Cradle to Cradle Certified® Silver.

Selected lines carry sustainability certificates like Nordic Swan, EcoCert Cosmos Organic and Fairtrade marks, and we hold ISO 14001 certification for environmental management. Our refillable dispenser systems, including SmartCare, and our refill service are designed to reduce single-use plastic across your property.

So when a corporate travel buyer, a listed brand partner or a lender asks your hotel for evidence from its suppliers, that paperwork is already sitting behind our products.

If you’d like to talk through what UK SRS means for your specific property or group, get in touch with our team, and we can walk through it together.

• Department for Business and Trade, UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS) S1 and S2, published 25 February 2026: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-sustainability-reporting-standards-uk-srs-s1-and-uk-srs-s2
• Financial Conduct Authority, CP26/5: Aligning listed issuers’ sustainability disclosures with international standards: https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/consultation-papers/cp26-5-sustainability-disclosures
• Financial Conduct Authority, PS26/19: Aligning listed issuers’ sustainability disclosures with international standards: https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/policy/ps26-19.pdf
• KPMG UK, UK Sustainability Reporting Standards overview: https://kpmg.com/uk/en/insights/sustainability/uk-sustainability-reporting-standards.html
• Linklaters, UK Government publishes final versions of UK SRS: https://sustainablefutures.linklaters.com/post/102mkje/uk-government-publishes-final-versions-of-uk-srs
• IHG, 2025 ESG Databook (PDF, p.5): https://www.ihgplc.com/~/media/Files/I/Ihg-Plc/investors/annual-report/2025/2025-esg-data-book.pdf
• Global Business Travel Association: https://gbta.org/gbta-foundation-reveals-the-state-of-climate-actionin-global-business-travel-in-new-report/
• British Business Bank, SMEs and Net Zero report: https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/about/research-and-publications/smes-and-net-zero-report-2025
• Booking.com, 2025 Travel and Sustainability Report, via Hospitality Net: https://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4126835.html
• Fieldfisher, Greenwashing under scrutiny: the CMA’s new powers: https://www.fieldfisher.com/en/insights/greenwashing-under-scrutiny-the-cma-s-new-powers-to-tackle-misleading-environmental-claims
• Reed Smith, Four months into the DMCC: https://www.reedsmith.com/articles/four-months-into-the-dmcc-navigating-cma-guidance-and-what-to-expect/