Your quarterly waste return, after Digital Waste Tracking

Digital Waste Tracking doesn't replace your quarterly waste return. If your environmental permit asks for a return, you still send it to the regulator every quarter, on the same form and by the same deadlines as before. The Environment Agency said so when the service went live: it isn't moving away from current reporting methods to begin with.

What does change is where the figures come from. The waste return reports the waste your site received and the waste it removed. Since October 2026, sites in England and Wales have logged every load they receive on DEFRA's service anyway, so the received half of the return is already sitting in records you've made.

Who sends a waste return

If you operate a site under an environmental permit, the Environment Agency expects you to tell it about the waste you received at the site and the waste you removed from it. That report is the waste return, and your permit says whether you send it every quarter or once a year.

Natural Resources Wales asks the same of permitted sites in Wales, with its own spreadsheet and the same quarterly deadlines.

The deadlines

Each quarterly return is due by the end of the month after the quarter closes.

Quarter	Return due by
January to March	30 April
April to June	31 July
July to September	31 October
October to December	31 January

A permit with yearly reporting covers January to December, and that return is due by 31 January the year after. The Environment Agency is blunt about lateness: miss 23:59 on the deadline day and you're in breach of your permit.

The return for the last quarter of 2026, October to December, is the first to cover a full quarter of mandatory Digital Waste Tracking in England and Wales. It's due by 31 January 2027, the same day as the first payment of the £26 service charge, which our post on the £26 Digital Waste Tracking charge explains.

How it's sent

In England, the return is the Environment Agency's waste tonnage return form, an Excel spreadsheet you fill in and email back. Version 17.0 of the form has been required since April 2026, and the Agency won't take it as a Google Sheets or Apple Numbers file. If your site received and removed nothing in the quarter, the form produces a nil return for you, but you still send it.

In Wales, Natural Resources Wales has its own template, and a site with more than one permit sends a return for each one.

What else carries on

Other reports carry on too. GOV.UK's guidance for receiving sites lists what you keep sending outside the new service, until further notice:

• Hazardous waste consignee returns. If you take hazardous waste, you still report it every quarter (a consignee return), separately to the Environment Agency and to the producer or holder, and the fees per consignment still apply.
• Paper notes. Waste transfer notes and hazardous waste consignment notes still go with the waste where they're required. The paper method runs alongside the digital service for now.

Whether Digital Waste Tracking will one day take over the waste return isn't settled. Nothing published says when or if, so plan on sending both.

Where the figures come from now

Each receipt you send to DEFRA records the waste's EWC code (the six-digit List of Wastes number) and its weight. Add up a quarter's receipts and you have most of what the return asks about the waste you took in.

Waste you sent out isn't in your receipts, because it's logged at the other end. Those figures still come from your outgoing transfer notes and weighbridge tickets.

Before you send the return, check two things:

• The tonnages match. The waste you took in should come to the same weight in your return as in your receipts.
• The weights are real. A receipt can start with an estimated weight, but it has to be updated once the load is weighed. Correct any estimates first, or the return carries them too.

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CarrierNote builds the received side of your quarterly return from the receipts you've already logged at the gate: what came in by customer and waste type, and the same waste by recovery or disposal code, ready to download as a CSV. See how it works at carriernote.co.uk/receiving-sites.

Sources

• National operator waste returns, Environment Agency guidance, updated 27 March 2026: who sends a return, the submission windows, the form version, the nil return, and the breach at 23:59 on the deadline day
• Submit your waste return, Natural Resources Wales: the Welsh template, the same quarterly deadlines, and a return per permit
• Digital Waste Tracking goes live: a major step forward in stopping waste crime, Environment Agency blog, 30 April 2026: current reporting continues, including quarterly waste returns
• Digital waste tracking: check if you need to report the waste you receive, GOV.UK guidance, updated 25 September 2026: waste returns and consignee returns continue, and the paper method runs alongside
• Hazardous waste: consignee returns, GOV.UK: quarterly consignee returns, sent separately to the Environment Agency and the producer or holder
• Report receipt of waste, GOV.UK guidance, updated 25 September 2026: the first payment of the service charge
• Digital waste tracking service, DEFRA policy paper: the phase dates for each nation, and what a record holds