Does a Carbon Reduction Plan have to be written by a consultant?

No. Nothing in PPN 006 or its technical standard says who must prepare the plan. What it does require is that the figures follow the GHG Protocol and the UK government conversion factors, and that the plan is approved by your board (or equivalent) and signed by a director.

Does a Carbon Reduction Plan need an independent audit?

No. PPN 006 asks for board approval and a director's signature, not verification. You can choose to have your figures checked, but it is not a condition of the plan.

How long does it take to write a Carbon Reduction Plan yourself?

Most of the time goes on collecting a year of bills, fuel and travel records and running a short staff commuting survey, which needs a couple of weeks for replies. With the data to hand, the calculation and write-up usually take a day or two with a spreadsheet, or an afternoon with software.

When is it worth paying for help?

When you have no one with the time to gather the data, when your business has unusual sources such as process emissions or complex freight, or when a large bid rides on the plan and you want someone to read it against the technical standard before you submit it.

Can you write a Carbon Reduction Plan without a consultant?

Yes. A small business can write its own PPN 006 Carbon Reduction Plan: the technical standard asks for figures calculated with the UK government conversion factors and approved by the board and signed by a director, not for an audit or a consultant's sign-off. What you need is a year of records, the free government template and a few days of someone's time.

Updated 6 October 2026 by the Carbon Recycling team. Figures use the official UK government conversion factors and are checked against the current gov.uk guidance.

What PPN 006 actually asks for

It helps to start with what the rules say, because a lot of the fear around Carbon Reduction Plans comes from assuming they are harder than they are. A plan that meets PPN 006 has six short sections, set out in the government's template:

a commitment to reach net zero by 2050 at the latest;
your baseline emissions, for a year you choose and explain;
your current emissions, for your most recent full year;
your reduction targets;
the carbon reduction projects you have done and plan to do;
a declaration, approved by your board and signed by a director, with the date.

The emissions must cover Scope 1, Scope 2 and five Scope 3 categories, in tonnes of CO2e, calculated with the UK government's conversion factors and following the GHG Protocol. That is the whole list. There is no requirement for a qualified author, an accredited assessor or third-party verification. Our complete PPN 006 guide covers who has to have one and how buyers use it.

What you need before you start

Writing the plan is quick. Gathering the numbers is the real work, so get these together first, for one full 12-month period:

What	Where it usually is
Electricity and gas use, in kWh	Bills or your supplier's online account, for every site you run
Fuel for company vehicles, in litres	Fuel card statements, or mileage logs if you have no fuel records
Refrigerant top-ups	Your air conditioning engineer's service records
Business travel	Mileage claims, rail and flight bookings, hotel invoices
Commuting and homeworking	A short staff survey
Waste, by type and how it was treated	Your waste contractor's reports
Deliveries in and out	Courier and haulier invoices

You will not have perfect data for everything, and you don't need it. Estimates are acceptable as long as you say how you made them. Our posts on commuting without surveying everyone and waste from your contractor's data show how.

Doing it yourself, step by step

Download the template. Our free Carbon Reduction Plan template follows the government's format, with a row for every category the plan must include.
Choose your baseline year. If you have never measured before, your baseline and current year can be the same year. See how to pick a baseline year when your records are patchy.
Convert each quantity to CO2e. Multiply each kWh, litre, mile and tonne by the matching DESNZ conversion factor for that year. The kWh to CO2e calculator does energy and fuel for you, and our emission factor pages list the 2026 figure for each common activity.
Fill in the five Scope 3 categories. They are upstream transport, waste, business travel, commuting and downstream transport. If one does not apply, say so and give the reason. Our post on the five Scope 3 categories has a worked example.
Set a target and list real projects. Start with your biggest source. For most small firms that is vehicles or heating.
Get it approved and signed. Your board, or equivalent, approves it and a director signs and dates it. See who signs off a Carbon Reduction Plan.
Publish it on your website. See how to publish your plan.

Where DIY plans usually go wrong

The mistakes we see are rarely about difficult maths. They are about gaps and mixing things up:

Leaving out commuting because the data isn't in the accounts. A missing category is easier for an evaluator to spot than a rough estimate.
Using the wrong year's factors, or a mix of years. Each reporting year uses the factor set for that year.
Counting a vehicle twice, once from fuel cards and again from mileage.
Putting staff's own cars in Scope 1. Company cars are Scope 1; employees' own cars on business are Scope 3 business travel. See company car and grey fleet emissions.
Showing a green tariff as zero without saying which Scope 2 method you used. See location-based vs market-based.
Forgetting the sign-off, or publishing a plan with no date.

When outside help is worth paying for

Doing it yourself is realistic for most small service businesses. Help earns its fee in a few situations:

nobody in the business can spare the few days it takes to collect the data;
you have sources that need judgement, such as industrial processes, large refrigeration systems or complicated freight;
a large contract depends on the plan and you want it checked against the technical standard before you submit it.

You don't have to choose between a full consultancy project and doing everything by hand. Software does the calculation and formatting, and leaves you to supply the data and the decisions. Our guide to what carbon reporting costs compares the options with published prices.

How Carbon Recycling helps

You add your bills, fuel, travel, commuting and waste figures, and Carbon Recycling applies the right government factor for each year and produces the plan in the government's format, marked as a draft until a director's sign-off is recorded. Plans start at £59 a month. If you want a second pair of eyes before a bid, our one-off expert review of your plan is £395.