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Digital Waste Tracking in Scotland and Northern Ireland: what changes for receiving sites in January 2027

12 November 2026 · CarrierNote

From January 2027, a site in Scotland or Northern Ireland that needs a permit or licence to take in waste must record every load it accepts on Digital Waste Tracking. DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) runs it as one online service for all four UK nations. You've got until the end of the second working day after a load arrives to get its record in. Sites in England and Wales have used the same service since October 2026, with the same record and the same £26 annual charge.

In Scotland the duty comes from the Digital Waste Tracking (Scotland) Regulations 2026, and the regulator is SEPA (the Scottish Environment Protection Agency). In Northern Ireland, GOV.UK and DAERA (the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs) both give January 2027 as the date. We couldn't find Northern Ireland's own regulations on legislation.gov.uk when we checked on 12 November. So for now, what we say below about Northern Ireland is based on the guidance.

Which sites it covers in Scotland

The Scottish rules apply to operators with a permit under the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018, which is how Scotland licenses waste sites. If you've got one and you take in controlled waste, the rules apply to you. Controlled waste is the household, commercial and industrial waste the rules cover. SEPA's examples include transfer stations, scrapyards, landfills, energy from waste plants and composting sites. There's no minimum size either, so even a small van load has to be recorded.

A few kinds of site are left out of this first phase. SEPA's guidance excludes sites that used to be exempt from waste licensing. It also excludes new authorisations at registration level, the lightest tier under the 2018 rules. The regulations themselves also leave out places a council provides for people to drop off their own waste. SEPA says that covers council household waste recycling centres, and the council transfer stations where waste is bulked up before it moves on.

Not sure where your site stands? GOV.UK's guidance points you to SEPA.

Which sites it covers in Northern Ireland

GOV.UK's guidance says anyone licensed or permitted to receive controlled waste must enter the details of every load. It names DAERA as the contact in Northern Ireland. DAERA's own page says the service becomes mandatory there from January 2027.

Northern Ireland's regulations will set the exact rules, such as how working days are counted. Until they're out, DAERA is the one to ask if you're unsure about your site.

How the two-working-day clock counts in Scotland

The Scottish deadline is the end of the second working day after the day the load arrives. Saturdays, Sundays, Easter Monday and Scottish bank holidays don't count as working days. Easter Monday is a bank holiday everywhere in the UK except Scotland. The Scottish regulations leave it out of the count anyway, and SEPA's guidance says the same.

Scotland's bank holidays include 2 January and St Andrew's Day on 30 November. Its summer bank holiday is the first Monday in August, where England's is the last Monday, and the difference can push a deadline back by a day. In 2027, Scotland's summer bank holiday is Monday 2 August. A load received at a Scottish site on Friday 30 July is due by the end of Wednesday 4 August. In England the same load would be due a day earlier, on Tuesday 3 August, because that Monday is a working day there.

Northern Ireland has bank holidays of its own, including St Patrick's Day on 17 March and the Battle of the Boyne holiday on 12 July. We'll only know how the Northern Ireland count treats them once its regulations are published. Our post on the two-working-day rule explains where the clock starts and what happens over a weekend.

What stays the same

The record is the one England and Wales already send. A receipt, in DEFRA's terms, is the record of a single load coming in. It carries the waste's EWC code (the six-digit European Waste Catalogue number that says what a waste is), its weight, the carrier's details, and the code for how it will be treated. Your site's permit or licence number goes on it as well, and DEFRA checks that number against the formats it accepts for each nation. Our post on what changed for receiving sites in England and Wales goes through the record field by field.

The charge is £26 a year for each organisation that records on the service. You start paying once the service becomes mandatory for you. The Scottish regulations put the figure at £26 too. Our post on the £26 charge covers who pays it and when.

Your existing paperwork carries on. SEPA says the new rules won't immediately change your current duty of care or waste reporting requirements. The duty of care is the legal duty to look after waste and pass it only to someone allowed to take it. Waste transfer notes, which record each handover of waste, still travel with each load. Nothing changes about your permit or licence either.

Getting your site ready

The service has been open to any permitted receiving site since 28 April 2026. That was the start of its public beta, the open trial before it became mandatory. You can register now and try some records on your own loads. It's a good way to spot early on where your gate process and the record don't line up.

Keep your permit or licence number somewhere handy, as you must include it on every receipt. If you run sites in Scotland and in England, check that each gate team is counting working days by its own nation's calendar.

Receiving sites in England and Wales send their records to DEFRA through CarrierNote today. It logs each load at the gate and sends the receipt to DEFRA for you. See how it works at carriernote.co.uk/receiving-sites.

Sources

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