Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (UK)
British regulatory body establishing company account preparation practices
Generally Accepted Accounting Practice in the UK (UK GAAP or GAAP (UK)) is the overall body of regulation establishing how company accounts must be prepared in the United Kingdom. Company accounts must also be prepared in accordance with applicable company law (for UK companies, the Companies Act 2006; for companies in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, companies law applicable to those jurisdictions).
Generally accepted accounting practice is a statutory term in the UK Taxes Acts. The abbreviation "GAAP" is also accepted as an abbreviation for the term used in other jurisdictions, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or Generally Accepted Accounting Policies.
History
Accounting standards derive from a number of sources. The chief standard-setter is the Accounting Standards Board (ASB), which issues standards called Financial Reporting Standards (FRS). The ASB is part of the Financial Reporting Council, an independent regulator funded by a levy on listed companies, and it replaced the Accounting Standards Committee (ASC), which was disbanded in 1990 following a number of criticisms of its work. To the extent that the ASC's pronouncements, known as Statements of Standard Accounting Practice (SSAPs), have not been replaced by FRS, they remain in force.
Process for setting standards
The ASB has a formal exposure process for proposed standards. Early concepts are issued as Discussion Papers.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (UK)” as british regulatory body establishing company account preparation practices. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as british regulatory body establishing company account preparation practices. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16981746. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006 and 1990.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (UK)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.