Your biggest customer just sent you a 50-question ESG questionnaire. The deadline is two weeks away. Nobody in the office has done one before — or the person who did has left the company. You open the spreadsheet and see questions about carbon emissions, modern slavery policies, board diversity, and waste management. Half of them feel irrelevant to a business your size. All of them need answering.

This is now a routine experience for UK SMEs. Around 90% of FTSE 100 companies assess suppliers on ESG criteria, and that assessment almost always takes the form of a questionnaire sent down the supply chain. If you supply goods or services to a larger business, these requests are not going away. They are accelerating.

This guide walks you through exactly how to handle them — efficiently, accurately, and without losing your mind.

What is a supplier ESG questionnaire?

A supplier ESG questionnaire is a structured set of questions that a customer (the "buyer") sends to its suppliers to assess their environmental, social, and governance performance. Think of it as a due diligence exercise. The buyer needs to understand the ESG risks in their supply chain, and your answers help them do that.

Most questionnaires arrive as spreadsheets or online forms. They range from 20 to 150 questions. Some follow standardised frameworks used by sustainability-rating platforms or the Carbon Disclosure Project supply chain programme. Many are custom — built by the buyer's procurement or sustainability team.

The key thing to understand: your responses directly affect whether you keep or win contracts. A poor or late response signals risk. A strong, well-evidenced response signals a supplier worth keeping.

Who sends these and why

Three groups drive the flow of ESG questionnaires to SMEs:

Corporate buyers. Large companies face their own reporting obligations under frameworks like the CSRD. They need supply chain data to complete their own disclosures. That means questionnaires to you.

Banks and investors. Lenders increasingly assess ESG risk across their lending portfolios. If your customer's bank asks about supply chain emissions, your customer asks you.

Regulators (indirectly). The EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires large companies to report on their value chain. The December 2025 Omnibus proposal narrowed direct scope, but the Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for SMEs (VSME) is now the expected cap on what large companies can ask their smaller suppliers. The effect: more standardised questionnaires flowing to SMEs, not fewer.

The bottom line — you are not reporting to a regulator. You are responding to a customer. But the customer's regulatory obligations are what generate the questions.

The 5 most common sections you will encounter

Nearly every supplier ESG questionnaire covers the same five categories, regardless of who sends it. Knowing the structure helps you prepare answers before the questionnaire even arrives.

1. Environment

This section covers your impact on the natural world. Expect questions like:

"Do you measure your Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions? If so, report your most recent annual figures."
"What waste reduction or recycling programmes do you operate?"
"Do you have an environmental management system (e.g. ISO 14001)?"

Even if you do not have formal certifications, you can describe what you actually do. A 30-person office that recycles, uses renewable energy tariffs, and tracks utility bills has a genuine story to tell.

2. Social

This covers your people — employees, contractors, and communities.

"Describe your health and safety management approach and report your lost-time injury rate for the past 12 months."
"Do you have a modern slavery statement? How do you assess modern slavery risk in your own supply chain?"
"What is the gender pay gap in your organisation?"

UK companies with 250+ employees must publish gender pay gap data. Smaller firms are not required to, but increasingly choose to disclose voluntarily.

3. Governance

This section asks about how your business is run.

"Describe your anti-bribery and corruption policy."
"Do you have a whistleblowing or speak-up procedure?"
"Who in your organisation has responsibility for ESG matters?"

Many SMEs already have these policies but have never collected them in one place. That is exactly the problem a structured response process solves.

4. Supply chain

Buyers want to know you are managing ESG risks in your own suppliers, not just within your four walls.

"Do you assess your suppliers on environmental or social criteria?"
"What percentage of your suppliers have you screened for ESG risk in the past 12 months?"
"Describe any supply chain incidents (environmental, labour, or ethical) in the past 3 years and your response."

If you are a small business with a handful of suppliers, a simple description of how you choose and monitor them is usually sufficient.

5. Company overview

This section captures the basics: company size, sector, locations, turnover, certifications.

"Provide your company registration number, registered address, and number of employees."
"List any relevant certifications (ISO 14001, ISO 9001, Cyber Essentials, etc.)."
"Describe your core business activities and primary markets."

These answers rarely change between questionnaires. Write them once and reuse them.

Step-by-step response process

Here is the process that turns a two-week panic into a two-hour task.

Step 1: Read the entire questionnaire before you write anything

Resist the urge to start answering immediately. Read every question first. Note which sections you can answer easily, which need input from colleagues, and which require new information. Flag any questions with specific data requirements (e.g. exact emission figures, injury rates, financial thresholds) — these take longer to gather.

Step 2: Gather existing materials

Pull together everything you already have: policies, certificates, previous questionnaire responses, annual reports, utility bills, HR data. Most SMEs have 60-80% of the information they need scattered across the business. The problem is not absence — it is organisation.

Check email archives for previous ESG questionnaire responses. Even if they are two years old, they contain reusable content.

Step 3: Identify reusable answers

If you have responded to ESG questionnaires before, compare the new questions against your old answers. You will find significant overlap. The question about your environmental policy? You answered a version of that six months ago. The modern slavery statement? Same one you wrote last year.

This is where most businesses waste time: rewriting the same answers from scratch because nobody stored the previous versions in a findable location.

Step 4: Build a fact library

A fact library is a structured collection of your ESG answers, organised by category. Each "fact" is a self-contained answer to a common question, tagged with keywords so you can find it quickly.

For example:

Category: Environment
Keywords: carbon, emissions, scope 1, scope 2, greenhouse gas
Fact: "In FY2024/25, our Scope 1 emissions were 12.4 tCO2e from company vehicles and gas heating. Scope 2 emissions were 8.1 tCO2e from purchased electricity. We have reduced combined emissions by 18% since FY2022/23 through fleet electrification and switching to a 100% renewable electricity tariff."
Evidence: Utility bills, fleet fuel records, renewable tariff contract

Build facts for each of the five categories above. Start with 20-30 facts and expand as new questions expose gaps.

Step 5: Match facts to questions

With a fact library in place, responding to a new questionnaire becomes a matching exercise. Read each question, identify the relevant keywords, and pull the matching fact. Adjust the wording if the question asks for a specific angle, but the core content stays the same.

This is the step that drops your response time from days to hours. Instead of composing 50 answers, you are reviewing 50 matches and editing where needed.

If you are doing this manually, a well-organised spreadsheet works. If you want the matching done automatically, AnswerVault's TF-IDF suggestion engine analyses question keywords against your stored facts and ranks the best matches — typically in under 15 milliseconds across a library of 500 facts.

Step 6: Fill gaps

Some questions will not match any existing fact. That is fine — it tells you exactly where to focus your effort. Common gaps for first-time responders include:

Quantitative emissions data (if you have never measured)
Formal policies that exist in practice but not on paper
Supply chain due diligence processes
Specific KPIs (injury rates, training hours, diversity percentages)

For each gap, decide: can you create this content now, or do you need to flag it as "in progress" with a timeline? Honest, specific answers about what you are working towards are far better than vague claims.

Step 7: Attach evidence

Strong responses include evidence. Weak responses make claims without backing them up.

For each answer, attach or reference the supporting document: the policy PDF, the certificate scan, the data extract, the third-party audit report. More on what evidence to include in the next section.

Step 8: Review, quality-check, and export

Before submitting:

Check for internal consistency. If you state 45 employees in one section and 52 in another, that undermines credibility.
Verify all figures are current. Last year's emission data is fine; data from three years ago looks neglected.
Ensure every question is answered. Blanks are worse than "Not applicable — [reason]."
Export in the format requested. Most buyers want XLSX or PDF. Some accept online form submissions.

Multi-format export matters here. If a buyer asks for PDF and you send a Word doc, it signals carelessness. If they want everything in a ZIP with evidence files, you need to be able to produce that cleanly. Tools like AnswerVault export to PDF, XLSX, and ZIP bundles with SHA-256 checksums for document integrity.

What evidence to include

Evidence transforms your answers from claims into verified facts. Here is what to attach for each category:

Environment: ISO 14001 certificate, utility bills or energy reports, waste transfer notes, carbon footprint calculations, renewable energy contracts.

Social: Health and safety policy, accident/incident log summaries, modern slavery statement (required for businesses with £36M+ turnover, voluntary for others), training records, employee survey results.

Governance: Anti-bribery policy, code of conduct, whistleblowing policy, data protection registration (ICO), Cyber Essentials certificate, board or management team terms of reference.

Supply chain: Supplier code of conduct, supplier assessment questionnaire template, audit reports from key supplier reviews.

Company overview: Companies House registration, insurance certificates, organisational chart, relevant accreditations.

A strong rule of thumb: if you make a claim, attach the proof. "We have an environmental policy" is weak. "We have an environmental policy — see attached, last reviewed January 2026" is strong.

Common mistakes that cost you contracts

After reviewing hundreds of SME questionnaire responses, these are the patterns that consistently lead to lost scores — and lost business:

Inconsistent answers. Stating different employee counts, turnover figures, or policy details in different sections of the same questionnaire. Buyers notice. It suggests either carelessness or dishonesty.

Missing evidence. Making claims without attaching supporting documents. "We are ISO 14001 certified" without the certificate attached is unverifiable.

Generic responses. Copy-pasting boilerplate that does not reflect your actual business. "We are committed to sustainability" means nothing without specifics. "We reduced office waste by 34% in 2025 by switching to a managed print service and eliminating single-use cups" means everything.

Late submissions. Missing the deadline, even by a day, can disqualify you from procurement rounds. Some buyers use automated systems that lock submissions at the deadline.

Ignoring "not applicable" questions. Leaving questions blank instead of explaining why they do not apply. "N/A — we do not operate company vehicles, so Scope 1 mobile combustion is zero" is a valid, useful answer.

Not updating from last time. Resubmitting last year's answers without updating figures, dates, or policy review dates. Buyers who asked last year will compare.

Time estimates: traditional vs structured approach

The difference is stark.

Traditional approach (no fact library, no structure):

First questionnaire: 3-5 working days
Subsequent questionnaires: 2-3 working days each
Annual time for 10 questionnaires: 23-35 working days

Structured approach (maintained fact library with keyword matching):

Initial setup (building the library): 4-6 hours
First questionnaire using the library: 2-4 hours
Subsequent questionnaires: 1-2 hours each
Annual time for 10 questionnaires: 3-5 working days

That is a reduction of 80-85%. For a business where the operations manager earns £55,000/year, the traditional approach costs roughly £5,000-£7,700 in staff time annually. The structured approach costs £660-£1,100.

Want to see the calculation for your business? Use the ESG time calculator to estimate your current costs and potential savings.

Automate the match-and-reuse workflow

Building a fact library in spreadsheets works. Plenty of businesses do it successfully. But it breaks down at scale — when you have 200+ facts, multiple people contributing answers, and evidence documents that expire and need refreshing.

AnswerVault was built specifically for this workflow. You maintain a vault of facts organised by the five ESG categories. When a new questionnaire arrives, the TF-IDF suggestion engine matches questions to your existing facts by keyword similarity. You review the suggestions, adjust where needed, attach evidence, and export the completed response in PDF, XLSX, or ZIP format.

The setup takes about an hour. Every questionnaire after that takes a fraction of the time.

If you want to try the structured approach before committing to any tool, start with the ESG questionnaire response template — it gives you the framework and example answers to build from.

How to Respond to a Supplier ESG Questionnaire: Step-by-Step Guide