ESG Strategy

The work opens with a materiality assessment that is argued rather than asserted. Topics are scored against what the business actually does and what its investors, lenders and regulators actually ask for. The ones that fall below the line are written down too, with the reason they were set aside, because a matrix nobody can interrogate is a decoration.

Targets follow. Each is stated with its base year, the boundary it applies to and the arithmetic that gets from here to there, so a reader can check the claim instead of taking it. Where a target leans on something outside your control — a grid decarbonising, a supplier changing fuel — that dependency is named inside the target rather than buried in a note.

• A materiality matrix with the scoring behind every placement
• A target set carrying base years, boundaries and the working
• A reporting line that says who signs what, and by when
• The topics considered and deliberately left out, with reasons

Materiality is a boundary question before it is a disclosure one. Leased assets, joint ventures and franchises can each be treated defensibly in more than one way, and the choice decides which topics are yours to report at all. We settle it in writing at the start, record why that treatment was chosen, and hold to it for the rest of the engagement.

We publish the scores and the reasoning, including for the topics we left out. A reader who disagrees can see exactly where to push.

Six to eight weeks from the first workshop you receive the materiality matrix with its scoring, the target set with the working shown, and a reporting line naming who signs what and by when.

It is written to go to a board and to an auditor without translation in between, which means the caveats sit in the body of it rather than in a footnote nobody reads.