Give your clients the ESG answers their panel reviews now ask for

Why are professional services firms being asked about ESG?

Because your clients are being asked about theirs. Large companies are increasingly expected to report emissions across their supply chain, called Scope 3, and the professional advisers they buy from are part of it. Panel reviews, client onboarding and framework tenders now often include a sustainability section alongside the usual questions on insurance, data security and conflicts.

Public sector work adds another layer. Central government contracts worth more than £5 million a year usually require a Carbon Reduction Plan under PPN 006, and other public buyers may ask their own net zero and social value questions, so check each tender pack.

What makes up a professional services firm’s footprint?

For most accountancy, legal, consulting and recruitment firms, the footprint comes from the office and from travel:

• Electricity for lighting, IT and air conditioning, from your bills or estimated from floor area
• Gas for heating, if your office has a gas supply
• Flights to clients and other offices, with radiative forcing included
• Rail, which for many firms is the main way to reach clients
• Staff mileage, taxis and hotels, from mileage claims, taxi miles and room nights
• Commuting and homeworking, estimated from how your team works
• Waste and water, from contractor data or estimated from bins and headcount

As a rough example, a 15-person firm using 20,000 kWh of electricity a year would produce around 2.6 tonnes of CO2e from electricity, using the 2026 UK grid factor of about 0.13 kg per kWh. The report shows that calculation line by line, with the factor year matched to your reporting period.

For firms with a lot of client visits, staff driving their own cars to meetings, known as grey fleet, can be a meaningful share of the total, and the report includes it alongside taxis and hotels. Commuting and homeworking are rough estimates and are labelled that way. Our guide to business travel emissions shows how the mileage figures are worked out.

The social and governance side

For professional firms, clients often read the people and governance sections most closely. Your report records pay practices including the Real Living Wage, benefits, training, diversity monitoring, health and safety, UK GDPR, your code of conduct, risk management and who is responsible for ESG. If an environmental policy or code of conduct is missing, your action plan flags it as a next step.

Many firms find this is where they have more to say than they expected: structured training and CPD, flexible working, mentoring, pro bono hours and charity days all count, and the report puts them in writing.

That gives you one document to draw on for panel reviews, onboarding forms and the sustainability section of tenders. See our guide to the sustainability section of a public sector tender for how to use it.

Getting it done without a partner’s afternoon

An office manager or operations lead can usually complete it in 20 to 30 minutes with a recent electricity and gas bill (or your floor area), bin details, headcount and a rough count of flights and train trips. Answers save as you go. Your first report is free. Start your report and send your client something better than a promise.