The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has published feedback from its consultation on ways to improve disclosure in financial reporting which indicates broad support for a more co-ordinated approach by regulators.

In October last year the FRC issued a discussion paper, Thinking about disclosures in a broader context: A road map for a disclosure framework, which sought to encourage more relevant financial reporting including beyond the confines of the financial statements.

The FRC says the responses it received indicate most respondents supported its key suggestions. These are that improving disclosure should be a shared responsibility between preparers, regulators, auditors and users, and that disclosures should be framed with the needs of investors in mind, in terms of communication, relevance and materiality.

The FRC also wants to see a move away from piecemeal approach to disclosures by standard setters and regulators towards more consistent setting of disclosure requirements across standards, and says it believes that a framework would provide a benchmark for measuring suggested disclosures.

Melanie McLaren, the FRC's executive director codes and standards said: 'It is clear that there is a will to tackle the level of "clutter" in financial reports and that establishing clear principles against which to measure proposed disclosures is seen as being helpful. There was particularly strong support for an increasing focus on relevance to investors as providers of risk capital. Voluminous disclosure may be given in the interests of transparency but may in fact introduce opaqueness.'

FRC published its discussion paper before that the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) said that it will look at disclosures as part of its review of its conceptual framework for financial reporting. The UK regulator said the feedback from the discussion paper would be used to provide input to the IASB project, as well as work by the Financial Reporting Lab and in developing narrative reporting guidance.