Digital waste tracking
What digital waste tracking means for a skip firm.
From October 2026 every site licensed to receive waste has to report what it took in, digitally, to Defra. This page is what that changes for a skip hire firm, what goes into a record, and what to do about it now — whether or not you ever use SkipDeck.
Written 6 September 2026 against Defra’s own guidance. It is a summary for skip firms, not legal advice, and the guidance is the thing that governs — read it, and check it again before the deadline.
The four facts that decide your plan.
From October 2026
Every organisation licensed or permitted to receive waste must use Defra's report receipt of waste service. January 2027 in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
It lands on the receiving site first
The duty is on whoever takes the waste in — a transfer station, a tip, a treatment site. If you tip at your own permitted site, it is you. If you tip at somebody else's, it is theirs, and they will be asking you for cleaner paperwork than a scribbled ticket.
£26 a year, per organisation
Defra's annual service charge, not due until October 2026. It is charged per organisation on the account, not per skip, per lorry or per site.
Records go in promptly, not monthly
Defra's guidance works through a receipt taken on the Monday being reported by the Wednesday — two working days. It is a daily habit rather than a month-end job, which is the part most firms have to plan for.
What one record has to hold.
This is the part that surprises people. A receipt is not a weight and a date — it is the load broken into its codes, with the hazardous and POPs lines carrying their own. A mixed builder’s skip is routinely four or five lines.
- The EWC code for each part of the load, and there is usually more than one
- Weight per line, and what the whole movement weighed
- Hazardous property (HP) codes on the item that actually carries them
- Persistent organic pollutants — upholstered seating is the one that catches skip firms
- Container type, and how many
- The carrier, their registration, and where the waste came from
- The recovery or disposal route each line went to
Waste transfer notes are not something this page will tell you to throw away. Check the guidance for what the new service replaces and what it does not before you change your paperwork.
Three things worth doing before October.
The first two are free and need no software at all.
1Find out whose duty it is
If every skip goes to somebody else's permitted site, the reporting duty is theirs — but the codes and weights they report are yours, and they will come back to you when a load does not match. Ask the sites you tip at what they will want from you, and in what form.
2Start recording EWC codes per load now
Not in October. The gap on the day is never the software, it is that nobody has been splitting a mixed skip into codes, and the person who knows what was in it left at four. A month of doing it by hand tells you what your actual waste streams are before anyone has to file them.
3Get your own permit and carrier details straight
Permit numbers, carrier registrations, the exact registered name of your business. Every one of them is a field on a record, and every one is a rejection when it is wrong. This is an hour of admin that saves a fortnight of bounced submissions.
Where SkipDeck is up to.
The work of a record is collecting it, and SkipDeck collects it as a byproduct of the day the yard already has. On the weighbridge the operator keys the weight and what was in the skip; the carrier, the site, the permit, the container and the route are already on the job.
Today, the route is the spreadsheet, and it is complete. SkipDeck builds Defra’s receipt-of-waste file for you, you upload it to Defra, and you load their processed reply back in — which is what marks each receipt accepted or rejected and stores its Waste Tracking ID against the job. One file carries many movements and many sites, so it is one batch a day rather than one upload per skip.
Direct filing is built, and it is not switched on. The connector for Defra’s Receipt of Waste API is written against their published specification and passes all fourteen of their approval scenarios against their test service; approval was submitted on 4 September 2026 and we are waiting on Defra. To be exact about it: SkipDeck is not connected to the live service and is not on Defra’s compatible-software list. It stays off until they grant production access, and nothing is ever submitted without somebody pressing the button.
We would rather say that plainly than let you find out in October. Nothing about the spreadsheet route depends on the approval landing — it is independent, it is the one a firm uses today, and no receipts queue up waiting for something to be turned on. See the receipts ledger.
See what your receipts look like, while there is time to fix them.
Fourteen days of your own loads, no card. Or read Defra’s guidance first and come back — it is the thing that governs, and none of this needs us to be true.