FRC outlines £73.3m budget for 2026/27

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has set out delivery plans across five major projects and a £73.3m budget for 2026-27, marking the second year of its three-year Strategy for 2025-28 and laying out a programme of work to maintain high standards in audit, corporate reporting and governance to fuel UK economic growth.

The regulator’s plan focuses on delivery across five major projects, such as a new ‘Audit Supervision Approach’ to center the FRC’s supervisory processes around a more proportionate and risk-based approach within the audit market.

It additionally features the ‘End-to-End Enforcement Review’, which will launch quicker and more efficient enforcement processes to support stakeholders, including an ‘Accelerated Procedure’ and ‘Early Admissions’ process.

This year also marks the first reporting cycle under Provision 29 of the UK Corporate Governance Code, as well as the transition year for the updated UK Stewardship Code, whose signatories now oversee £56.4trn in assets.

Alongside this, the FRC said it will continue to aid SMEs, promote innovation with the ‘Innovation and Improvement Hub’ and found a new voluntary ‘Sustainability Assurance Provider Registration’ scheme.

The regulatory body stipulated a total budget of £73.3m, up below inflation at 1.36% on the previous year.

It added that headcount will once again remain flat at 480 (FTE: 462).

Overseas, the FRC said it will expand on its leadership of the IAASB’s Going Concern Task Force and its key role in developing the global sustainability assurance standard ISSA 5000 to make sure that UK priorities mold the future of international corporate reporting and audit.

The plan comes after public consultation between December 2025 and February 2026, with 15 responses from Public Interest Entity audit market participants, audit firms and professional bodies.

The FRC said respondents generally approved of its path, its ambition to make regulation “clear, easy to navigate and more proportionate”, notably for SMEs and smaller audit firms, and its commitment to participate in ‘Modernising Corporate Reporting and Sustainability Reporting’.

Richard Moriarty, FRC CEO, said: “Our plan demonstrates how we will continue to support an environment for UK economic growth, competitiveness and responsible risk taking by enhancing investor and stakeholder confidence in the standards of corporate governance, reporting and audit. This is a key year of delivery for changes to the FRC’s regulatory approach to ensure it is match fit for the future – and another year of keeping headcount flat.”