Why SECR & ESOS Reporting Has Changed The Way Landlords View Empty Properties
Empty commercial property has always cost money. Business rates, insurance, security, maintenance and essential utilities can continue to drain budgets even while a building generates no rental income. For many larger landlords and property businesses, however, another reason to look more closely at what happens inside a vacant building is increasingly important: energy reporting.
Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) requires qualifying UK businesses to disclose specified energy use and emissions as part of their annual reporting. The Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) separately requires qualifying large organisations to measure energy consumption, assess significant use and identify opportunities to improve performance. These statutory regimes are already established and require attention today, not as part of future planning.
This matters for empty commercial property because a void does not necessarily stop consuming energy. Security systems, lighting, heating for frost protection, pumps and other equipment can continue operating long after the previous tenant has left. For landlords responsible for that consumption, an empty property can represent a financial cost and an environmental footprint with no return.
What Role Should SECR & ESOS Play In Your ESG Reporting?
SECR provides a useful model for good practice even where a business falls outside its mandatory scope. Government guidance actively encourages private-sector organisations not legally required to report under SECR to do so voluntarily. This means consistently recording energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions, explaining the methodology used, and comparing performance over time. Government SECR guidance encourages organisations to show up to five years of data.
ESOS adds another useful layer. Its assessments identify major energy-use areas and opportunities to reduce them. Participants are required to produce action plans and provide progress updates, creating a clearer link between measurement and improvement.
Is ESG Reporting Mandatory In The UK?
ESG reporting records and communicates a business’s performance across Environmental, Social and Governance factors, but no single ESG reporting requirement applies to every UK business. However, specific statutory and regulatory requirements apply to organisations depending on their size, structure and activities. These include SECR and ESOS, while other sustainability disclosure requirements apply to particular regulated and listed businesses. Even when ESG reporting remains voluntary, following recognised reporting principles gives landlords a more consistent and credible way to demonstrate environmental and social performance.
Empty Commercial Property & Energy Use
ESOS guidance states that landlords must include energy data from unoccupied buildings as well as occupied ones. This rule is particularly relevant to commercial landlords. Once a tenant leaves, electricity and gas consumption rarely drops completely to zero. External and security lighting may remain switched on. Alarm and monitoring systems need power. Heating may be maintained at a minimum level to protect pipes and building fabric, and ventilation, pumps or dehumidifiers may continue running where required.
Individually, some of these loads may appear insignificant. Across a portfolio of vacant shops, offices, warehouses, or industrial units, they can become much more problematic. Commercially, on a large scale, calculations can quickly become uncomfortable. An empty building can generate energy costs and associated emissions while producing no rent, employment, customer activity or community benefit. For landlords already measuring this data, the question becomes whether a vacant asset should simply remain a cost or whether temporary occupation can give the building a useful purpose while its long-term future is decided.
How Energy Use Reporting Is Reshaping Landlord Strategy For Empty Space
Vacancy has traditionally been viewed primarily through the facilities and finance lens: how much are the local business rates, what does security cost, and how quickly can the unit be re-let? SECR and ESOS introduce another layer of scrutiny to be collected, analysed and discussed. ESOS reports must identify total and significant energy consumption and energy-saving opportunities, while SECR places specified energy and carbon information into annual corporate reporting. In this context, a property consuming energy while delivering no operational benefit stands out.
Energy use becomes part of a wider conversation about portfolio efficiency and whether the business is using its assets productively. When you have a tenant, a lease arrangement can include commitments to share energy use, carbon emissions and other ‘green’ data, helping both parties monitor and improve environmental performance. However, no equivalent mechanism exists to help landlords produce sustainability reports for empty units.
How Charity Occupation Strengthens A Landlord’s ESG Position
Charity occupation provides a way to turn otherwise dormant commercial space into something useful while longer-term property plans continue. ASTOP works with landlords to place charities, non-profit organisations and good causes into suitable empty commercial properties temporarily. Rather than guardianship, using a building for genuine charitable or community purposes, such as office space, storage, training, community projects, workshops, or retail activity, is often seen as a highly positive ESG contribution.
Charity occupation also addresses one of the biggest empty property costs through business rates relief. It also gives a vacant building a social outcome that can sit alongside environmental data within the ESG sphere. Instead of simply reporting the energy consumed by an unused property, a landlord can also demonstrate that a good cause benefited. Depending on the project, measurable outcomes could include vulnerable community support, training provision, increased employment opportunities and more.
Strong ESG performance strengthens both external reputation and internal engagement. Charity occupation gives landlords a credible good-news story to share with employees, investors, partners and local communities, supported by a real organisation, a clear use for the space and measurable social outcomes. This gives PR and communications teams compelling evidence of ESG in action for annual reports, staff communications, stakeholder engagement and wider media activity.
Practical Steps For Landlords Preparing For ESOS And SECR Scrutiny
Before looking at individual actions, landlords should treat SECR, ESOS and wider ESG reporting as part of the same property-management conversation. The strongest approach is integrated. This turns vacant-property management from a reactive exercise into a more strategic part of portfolio performance. We have, however, shared four steps.
Establish If Reporting Requirements Apply
Check whether your business, or the wider group it belongs to, falls within the SECR and ESOS regimes. The answer will depend on your size and corporate structure.
Audit Energy Use
Landlords should monitor energy use in empty properties, looking beyond obvious heating and lighting costs towards other background consumption.
Consider Charity Occupation
Although charity occupation offers many benefits, it still requires careful consideration. Working with an experienced intermediary can help with charity matching, temporary leasing and licence agreements, and the associated paperwork.
Record Temporary Occupation Properly
If a charity or another good cause uses an empty building as part of a meanwhile-use arrangement, document it carefully. Accurate reporting turns community activity into credible ESG and CSR evidence.
ASTOP’s role in support of the above is tactical rather than strategic. We identify suitable charity occupiers, match them with vacant space, manage the occupation agreement and provide the relevant paperwork. We can also help recording the outcomes, giving landlords a straightforward way to turn energy reporting intentions into credible on-the-ground activity.
What Landlords Say About Working With ASTOP
SECR and ESOS reporting makes energy consumption harder to ignore, particularly where a landlord remains responsible for an empty unit. Charity occupation does not remove that consumption from reporting, but it changes the story behind it. ASTOP’s case studies share examples where energy use has supported active community use rather than simply maintain a dormant building.
At Croxley Park in Watford, for example, ASTOP helped bring empty units back into use for more than 20 charities. Instead of properties sitting vacant while continuing to incur costs and consume energy, the space supported charitable activity alongside business rates savings and stronger ESG outcomes for the landlord. In London, Voluntary Action Camden used three floors of office space in Mornington Crescent. The organisation used the property as a collaborative hub where multiple groups worked together, shared resources, and supported the local community.
Similarly, Refugee Action Kingston used a town-centre base arranged through ASTOP to provide office and meeting space alongside adult English classes, employment support, clothing days and supplementary classes for young people. ASTOP’s involvement with the Global Educational Trust led to a free bookshop in Bishop Auckland. Local MP Helen Goodman, at the time, described the project as “an innovative and worthwhile use of what was previously an empty shop” and praised its contribution to town-centre revitalisation.
The projects vary, but the principle is consistent. SECR and ESOS bring greater scrutiny to energy consumption across qualifying organisations and their properties. ASTOP helps landlords ensure that, where empty buildings continue to consume resources, they also deliver a clear and credible social return. It’s an ESG win for everyone involved.
Could Charity Occupation Work For Your Empty Property?
Empty commercial units are never completely invisible from an ESG perspective. What has changed is how much attention businesses now pay to the energy consumed across their operations.
For landlords already within SECR or ESOS, the environmental impact of vacant space deserves particular attention. SECR brings specific energy and carbon information requirements into corporate reporting, while ESOS requires qualifying organisations to understand their energy consumption and identify opportunities to improve efficiency. Charity occupation does not make that energy use disappear and nor should it be presented as a carbon offset, but it does turn an otherwise dormant property into a useful asset. A vacant office can become a charity hub. An empty shop can support a community project. Unused warehouse space can provide storage and distribution capacity. All of these mean energy is hard to view as wasted, and consumption supports genuine community use rather than an otherwise dormant space.
If you have a vacant commercial property and want to understand whether charity occupation could work for you, contact the ASTOP team.
