According to UK Finance, the trade body for the banking industry, company reporting in the UK has grown too long and too repetitive to be useful. On 15 September 2026 it published proposals with the law firm DLA Piper to simplify it. They land a week after the government opened its own consultation. That consultation asks whether most medium-sized companies still need an audit at all.
01What UK Finance and DLA Piper propose
The report is called Value, Not Volume. It says annual reports now regularly run past 250 pages. FTSE 100 reports have grown 27% since 2019.
It makes three main proposals. Simplify the narrative reporting the Companies Act requires, and cut the overlap between reports. Let companies keep unchanging information online rather than reprint it every year. And stop the low-value regulatory announcements that tell investors little.
Julie Shacklady, director of primary markets at UK Finance, said the UK has some of the most trusted markets in the world. She warned they risk being undermined by duplicative and costly requirements.
02What is the government consulting on?
The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade opened a 12-week consultation on modernising corporate reporting on 7 September. It closes on 30 November 2026.
The consultation proposes one SME regime in place of the separate small and medium-sized company rules. Under it, the audit exemption small companies already have would be extended to all SMEs. Medium-sized means turnover under £54 million, according to the consultation document.
The document puts the risk plainly. A company may find out it needs three years of audited accounts only when it applies for a loan. At that point, it says, the company is unlikely to be able to proceed, given the delay and expense. So it asks whether dropping the audit would reduce medium-sized companies' access to lending. It also asks whether it would add a premium to the cost. And it floats a cheaper voluntary assurance standard, designed to give lenders confidence in SME accounts.
03What does this mean if you plan to borrow?
Nothing has changed yet. Audit rules for medium-sized companies stay as they are until the consultation ends and the government decides. For a small company already below the audit threshold, neither document changes what a lender asks for today.
What it does change is a question to ask before you grow. If your company crosses the medium-sized threshold, an audit may stop being compulsory. Whether a lender still wants one is a separate matter. In our experience, lenders judge a growing firm on the numbers it can show. Clean management accounts, a current cash flow forecast and up-to-date filings do most of the work.
The consultation is open to companies, not only accountants and investors. If the cost of an audit is a real burden on your business, the government is asking to hear it before 30 November.
If you are weighing up growth finance for the next stage, read what the Bank of England's agents reported this month. They found that lenders prefer larger, established borrowers. Our guide on what to do when your accounts do not tell the whole story covers how to present the numbers a lender needs.
