Digital waste tracking software for permitted waste sites
Log a load at the gate. It goes straight to DEFRA.
Digital waste tracking for permitted sites. 20 seconds a load on your phone, submitted inside the two-working-day deadline. No spreadsheet.
Direct submission starts after you link your organisation's DEFRA account. Until then, it builds DEFRA's spreadsheet for you to upload.
Checks every load against DEFRA's rules before it saves — so a mistake is caught at the gate, not when a submission bounces two working days later
Join before 1 November 2026 and nothing is due until 1 November; join from 1 November and you get 14 days free. After that it's £89 a month per site, and there's no card to enter until you start it. No setup fee when you set it up yourself. If a consultant introduces you, any setup fee is agreed through them and you see the amount before you pay anything.
ENGLAND AND WALES. NORTHERN IRELAND AND SCOTLAND: JANUARY 2027.
Set it up yourself - no calls. Add your site and log a load in the browser.
Try it now - no signupConsultant or TCM? Book a walkthrough
Already work with a waste consultant? Ask them about Byrne
Set it up free and try it with your own site. Join before 1 November 2026 and nothing is due until 1 November; join from 1 November and you get 14 days free. After that it's £89 a month per site, and there's no card to enter until you start it. No contract, cancel any time.
A site in Scotland or Northern Ireland that joins before 1 January 2027 pays nothing until 1 January 2027, the day the duty starts there.
Scotland: mandatory from 1 January 2027. Northern Ireland: DAERA say January 2027. What Scottish and NI sites need to do
Two different dates. Make sure you're on the right page.
The most common mistake in this trade is assuming the wrong date applies to you.
PHASE 1 — 1 OCTOBER 2026
You hold a permit and take waste in
Transfer stations, scrap yards, recycling and treatment sites. You report each load you receive. Around 10,000 permitted sites in England and Wales.
PHASE 2 — OCTOBER 2027
You carry, broker or deal in waste
Skips, grabs, muckaway, clearance, scrap collection, brokers and dealers. You record loads you move. More than 100,000 operators.
Most operators think the 2027 date applies to them.
If you hold a permit to RECEIVE waste, yours is 1 October 2026.
- Every permitted or licensed site receiving waste in England and Wales reports each load digitally from 1 October 2026.
- The deadline is within two working days of the day after the load arrives.
- Northern Ireland and Scotland follow on 1 January 2027.
- Paper records continue. DEFRA haven't published an end date for them.
- DEFRA accept their API or their own spreadsheet template. You can't use your own format.
- You need an ORGANISATION Government Gateway or GOV.UK One Login. The DEFRA account costs £26 a year per organisation from October 2026. Registering now is free.
Listed on GOV.UK as a compatible software provider
DEFRA publishes the list of providers whose software has been confirmed to meet the digital waste tracking requirements. Byrne Waste Tracking was added on 7 August 2026. Live production API credentials, all 14 production approval tests passed, no exemptions.
I'm one of the providers on that list. Check it before you buy from anybody, including me.
Does this apply to your site?
Phase 1 is defined by your permit, not by what you call yourself. If your site is on the Environment Agency's waste operations register under one of these classes, October 2026 is your deadline:
Household waste recycling centres are out of scope — Wales entirely, and in England where the waste comes from residents. If your HWRC also takes commercial waste, that part is in scope.
Carriers, brokers and dealers — you're Phase 2, October 2027. You've got another year. Come back nearer the time.
Skip hire — it depends. If you tip into your own permitted transfer station, you're Phase 1. If you only carry and tip at someone else's site, you're Phase 2.
Does the 1 October rule apply to you?
Four questions, 20 seconds.
Question 1 of 4
Does your site hold an environmental permit?
Or check your actual permit
The four questions above are a rule of thumb. If you'd rather check the real thing, type your permit number or your company name into the free checker and it'll tell you what the Environment Agency register holds for your site.
No sign-up, nothing to fill in, and it works whether or not you ever buy anything from me.
Check my permit →Or see every permitted site in your council area: permitted waste sites by local authority area
This is the whole system
What this doesn't do
Every provider on the GOV.UK list will tell you what their software does. Here's what mine doesn't.
- It only sends to DEFRA by itself once you link your DEFRA account. Until then it builds the spreadsheet in DEFRA's format and you upload it, which takes a couple of minutes. Your DEFRA account has to be in your company's name, not mine.
- There's no app to install. It runs in the web browser that's already on the phone. If your crew would rather tap an app than a bookmark, that's a fair reason to pick someone else.
- It doesn't read your weighbridge. Weights and ticket numbers are typed in. If you want loads pulled off a weighbridge automatically, other providers do that, and I'd rather tell you now.
- Your records are kept for you, and you can download every load as a spreadsheet whenever you want.
What still lands on you after October
Paper doesn't stop on 1 October. Most operators think digital tracking replaces the paperwork. It doesn't — not yet. DEFRA's guidance is explicit that the paper system runs alongside the digital service until further notice.
- WASTE TRANSFER NOTES
You must keep completing them.
- ANNEX VII FORMS
Unchanged.
- HAZARDOUS CONSIGNMENT NOTES
Unchanged, where required.
- WASTE RETURNS
Continue in line with your permit conditions.
- CONSIGNEE RETURNS
Continue, and the charges still apply.
Digital waste tracking removes no existing duty. On 2 October you'll have more admin than you had on 30 September, not less.
- QUARTERLY WASTE RETURNS
To the Environment Agency or NRW, four times a year on their Excel template.
- HAZARDOUS CONSIGNEE RETURNS
Quarterly, on a Windows-only macro spreadsheet, at £10 a consignment.
- WASTE TRANSFER NOTES, ANNEX VII AND CONSIGNMENT NOTES
On paper.
- SITE ACCEPTANCE RECORDS AND STOCK ON SITE
Under your permit.
Most of that is the same data you'll already be keying for DWT. As far as I've seen, nobody on DEFRA's list of software providers does anything with it yet. That's the direction this is going.
The free option
DEFRA publish a spreadsheet template. It's free, and it's one of only two legal ways to send your records. If you take a handful of loads a day, use it. I'd rather say that than sell you something you don't need.
What moves people off it is volume. Every load is up to 44 columns on DEFRA's spreadsheet, 22 of them mandatory, with a two working day clock on each one. At twenty loads a day that's several hundred entries, typed, every day, by someone standing at a gate in the rain.
That's what the £89 buys. The typing, and the deadline tracking that stops a load slipping past its two working days.
What happens if you don't
Failing to comply is an offence — that covers deadlines, outages, written records, correcting errors and digital exclusion.
- £1,000
Fixed monetary penalty
- UNLIMITED
Variable monetary penalty
- UNLIMITED
Fine on conviction
Source: The Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026, regulations 16 to 19.
This isn't a scare tactic — it's the published position, and you can read it yourself.
Can't I just stay on paper?
There is an exemption, but it's narrower than most people expect. DEFRA call it being digitally excluded.
YOU MAY QUALIFY IF:
- Digital tools aren't practical because of your age, a disability, or your location.
- Your business is run entirely by practising members of a religious society whose beliefs aren't compatible with electronic records.
YOU DO NOT QUALIFY IF:
- You prefer paper records.
- You're unfamiliar with software.
- It would take extra time or cost to comply.
If you do qualify, you need a digitally excluded number from your regulator, you must make a written record of every load within the same two working days, include your number on every record, and keep them for three years. You can be fined for operating as digitally excluded without a number.
For almost every permitted site, this isn't a route out.
A two-man transfer station has to report every load within two working days, same as a national operator.
DEFRA's DWT Phase 1 covers 9,931 permitted sites in England and Wales. Around 11,765 across the UK once Scotland and Northern Ireland follow in 2027. Plenty of them still run the gate on paper notes, texts and a spreadsheet somebody types up on a Friday.
- 01
The notes are in a lever-arch file
Transfer notes sit in the cab, the gatehouse and a folder in the office. None of that goes to DEFRA in the format they'll accept.
- 02
The big systems are priced for fleets
Waste-tracking software is sold to national operators with a compliance manager. You've got a gate man and a phone.
- 03
The mandate isn't optional
From 1 October 2026, every permitted site in England and Wales that takes waste in must report it to DEFRA digitally.
From gate to DEFRA — in three steps
The driver's still stood at the weighbridge with a phone. Nothing to install, and one simple form for your gate man to learn.
- 01
Capture at the gate
Driver or gatehouse logs each load on a simple mobile form — no app to download, works in the browser on any smartphone.
- 02
Automated formatting
Every record is structured — waste codes, tonnage, carrier, source and destination — to match DEFRA's official submission fields.
- 03
Prepared for the official route
Records are built in DEFRA's own format, ready to go to the Report Receipt of Waste service inside the mandatory two-working-day window. DEFRA accept two methods and only two — their API, or their own spreadsheet template. You cannot use your own.
I help you meet DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking requirements — I'm an independent supplier, not a government body, and I don't guarantee legal compliance on your behalf.
What to ask any provider
DEFRA publish a list of software that works with their service, and I'm on it. Have a look at a few — I'm not the cheapest and I won't pretend to be. But ask all of us the same five questions.
- When does billing start? No setup fee when you set it up yourself. If you join before 1 November 2026, nothing is due until 1 November 2026, then £89 a month per site. From 1 November 2026, every new site gets 14 days free, then £89 a month.
- Did you pass all 14 production approval tests, or are you exempt from some? Some providers on that list are exempt from parts of the testing. I passed all fourteen with no exemptions.
- Is there a tie-in? Check the contract length before you sign. There's no contract here. Stop paying whenever you like.
- Can I get my data out? Cancel any time and I'll export everything you've recorded to a spreadsheet you keep.
- Who do I deal with? Me, directly. Email is the quickest way to reach me — I reply the same working day.
Everything a small permitted site actually needs
One product, everything included. Join before 1 November 2026 and nothing is due until 1 November; join from 1 November and you get 14 days free. After that it's £89 a month per site, and there's no card to enter until you start it. No setup fee when you set it up yourself. If a consultant introduces you, any setup fee is agreed through them and you see the amount before you pay anything. Unlimited loads and users.
£89 / month for one site
No setup fee when you set it up yourself.
UNLIMITED LOADS · UNLIMITED USERS · NO CONTRACT
- 01Gate capture on a phone
- 02Records built in DEFRA's format
- 03Download every load to a spreadsheet whenever you need it — for your records or an inspector
- 04Duty-of-care detail captured against every load
- 05Support from me, by email — I reply the same working day
More than one site? It's £89 a month for each one.
Launch offer
Free to set up. No card, no contract, cancel any time.
See it working on your own paperwork
Free to set up. No card, no contract, cancel any time.
Set it up yourself - no calls. Add your site and log a load in the browser.
Try it now - no signupLooking after sites for other people?
You set your clients up, then see every client site on one screen, with a weekly table of every client’s loads. It’s free for the consultant. If a consultant introduces you, any setup fee is agreed through them and you see the amount before you pay anything.