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Vertical two
Sustainability has moved from a communications exercise to a reporting, assurance and capital-allocation discipline with real consequences for getting it wrong. We place and deploy people who can navigate the frameworks, defend a number to an auditor and make decarbonisation decisions stick.
The picture
A sustainability number used to live in a standalone report that nobody tested. It now sits in an annual report, gets read by investors, is increasingly assured by an external auditor and carries consequences for the directors who signed it.
That shift has caught a lot of teams out. The people who built a sustainability function around strategy, stakeholder engagement and communications are now being asked for data lineage, calculation methodology, control evidence and an audit trail: skills the function was never hired for.
It has also changed who needs to be in the room. Finance owns the reporting boundary. Internal audit is being asked to provide assurance over data it has never tested. The sustainability team knows the subject matter but not the evidence standard.
We work across all three, because we staff and deliver in both disciplines. That is why our sustainability work arrives audit-ready rather than needing to be made audit-ready later.
How we engage
A sustainability requirement usually resolves into one of these four modes. The first conversation is about working out which.
Specialist recruitment across the sustainability market, led by practitioners who have held the roles and can tell a real technical claim from a rehearsed one.
Advisory engagements owned end to end or our consultants embedded inside your sustainability team, with the training that goes alongside.
What we cover
We are deliberately narrow. These are the areas where we hold genuine depth and we will say so when something falls outside them.
Gap analysis against IFRS S1 and S2, double materiality assessments, disclosure drafting and the reporting calendar that makes it repeatable next year.
Governance, strategy, risk management and metrics. Scenario analysis that a risk committee can actually use and transition plans that survive a challenge from finance.
ESOS Phase 3 updates and Phase 4 delivered with an accredited Lead Assessor, annual SECR reporting and Carbon Reduction Plans to the PPN standard for public tendering.
Organisational and operational boundaries, emission factors, full value-chain footprints, science-aligned targets and decarbonisation roadmaps with costed interventions.
Getting a disclosure to the standard an external assurer will sign, before they arrive. Controls, evidence, methodology documentation and an audit trail that holds.
TNFD-aligned assessment, dependency and impact screening and nature strategy for investors and corporates where the data is thinner than the expectation.
Investment framework reviews, portfolio company engagement, impact measurement frameworks and the sustainability content of fund documentation and LP reporting.
Ownership, systems, controls and review over sustainability data, designed with our Internal Audit practice so it stands up when it is tested, not just when it is presented.
Climate & carbon
Most organisations can produce a carbon footprint once. Far fewer can produce the same footprint again twelve months later, on a consistent basis, without the person who built the original spreadsheet.
That is the difference between a climate deliverable and a climate capability. Our climate work is built to be repeatable: documented boundaries, a stated emission-factor source and vintage, a calculation methodology someone else can follow and an evidence trail for every input.
It is less exciting than a net zero announcement. It is also the only version that holds up when an assurer, an investor or a tender process asks how you got there.
Assurance readiness
Assurance readiness is not a document. It is whether, for every number you disclose, you can answer six questions without a scramble.
We run this as a readiness assessment before an assurer is appointed or alongside a first-year engagement. Our Internal Audit practice does the testing, which is the part most sustainability consultancies cannot staff.
Roles we place
The sustainability market is full of people whose CV says the right framework. Our briefs are screened by practitioners who can tell within ten minutes whether someone has built a disclosure or only reviewed one.
Selected work
Enterprise-wide sustainability support: an Impact Framework to quantify the return on sustainability investments, a strategy and roadmap review, an AI market review and engagement with portfolio companies.
An integrated compliance programme delivered using an accredited ESOS Lead Assessor: ESOS Phase 4, the Phase 3 update, FY26 SECR and a Carbon Reduction Plan.
Recruited into the Chief Sustainability Officer's team following our earlier strategy and organisational design review, placing a Head of Communities.
Questions
No and we would not offer to. Where we have built a footprint or a disclosure, we cannot then provide independent assurance over it. That is the whole point of independence. What we can do is get the work to the standard an external assurer will accept and separately provide the independent element on work we did not prepare.
Very often, yes, through someone else's scope. Customers in scope will ask you for value-chain data. Public sector tenders ask for a Carbon Reduction Plan. Lenders and insurers ask for climate data. Being out of direct scope rarely means being out of the conversation and the organisations that get caught out are usually the ones who assumed it did.
Yes, using an accredited ESOS Lead Assessor. We usually deliver it as part of an integrated compliance programme rather than in isolation. ESOS, SECR and a Carbon Reduction Plan draw on overlapping data and running them separately means paying three times to collect it.
Two things. The partner who scopes the work delivers it, so you are not handed to a team you have not met. And we have an internal audit practice in the same firm, which means our work is built against the evidence standard from the start rather than being retrofitted when assurance arrives.
Frequently and sometimes that is the better answer. We have delivered enterprise-wide sustainability and sustainable finance training covering reporting frameworks, GHG and climate, social and governance and how to audit sustainability data. If you have capable people who are simply missing the subject matter, training is cheaper and more durable than a consultant.
First footprint, third reporting year or first time an assurer is coming.
Permanent or interim, reporting manager to Head of Sustainability. Screened by practitioners, not keyword matched.
Our recruitment practiceOutsourced or embedded. A named partner, a written scope and a deliverable that will survive assurance.
Our delivery practice