One record per movement, made at the kerbside

Every field DEFRA requires for a waste movement: EWC codes (the six-digit European Waste Catalogue number that says what a waste is), physical form, container type, weight, hazardous properties, POPs flags, and the disposal or recovery code. Captured once as structured data on the phone, not scribbled on paper and keyed in later.

Before a record is saved, the app checks it against the rules: missing EWC code, no carrier registration number without a reason, hazardous load without a consignment note code. Problems show up on screen while the driver is still at the kerbside, not in a rejection email three days later.

Rural tips, underground car parks, patchy 4G on an industrial estate: drivers can record a movement with no signal at all. The record queues on the device and syncs when the connection comes back, and the temporary number written on the customer's copy is reconciled with the real one afterwards. On the phone it runs as the mobile app, free on every plan, with nothing to download from an app store.

Whoever hands the waste over signs on the screen with a finger before the van moves. When the person who has to sign isn't there, email them a single-use link and choose how hard the app chases it: not at all, one nudge on day three, or up to five over ten days. A half-signed note doesn't sit forgotten.

Up to thirty photos on a movement, each with a caption, taken on the same phone that made the record. They queue offline like the record does, and print as an evidence sheet when a customer disputes what was on the van or a tip queries a load.

Save the people you collect from, your vehicles, and the sites you tip at, then pick them on the form instead of typing them out again. For a site you've never used, search the Environment Agency or Natural Resources Wales permit register from inside the form and take its name, address, and permit number straight off the register. Send work out to other hauliers and they get an address book of their own.

A hazardous movement gets a consignment note with its own code, plus the HP codes (the hazard properties, such as flammable or corrosive) that say why the waste is hazardous. The note is produced as a PDF carrying the right legal basis for England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland, and is kept for three years, which is what a consignment note needs in all four nations.

POPs are persistent organic pollutants, the harmful chemicals found in things like older sofas and some insulation board. Where they apply you record which ones and at what concentration on the same form as everything else, so a POPs load isn't a separate piece of paperwork someone has to remember.

The site receiving a hazardous load records whether it accepted or rejected it, how much it actually took, and signs for it. That comes back onto your own copy of the consignment note, so the end of the chain is on the same record as the start.

CarrierNote is on the GOV.UK software provider list for Digital Waste Tracking and connected to the live service. A receiving site files its records through us today. Carrier movements follow the moment DEFRA opens that step, with nothing for you to install or set up when it happens.

Check it on the GOV.UK list of software providers, where we’re named as Red Tape Software Limited with Carriernote.co.uk as the product. What the listing means.

We publish how our software does on DEFRA’s test scenarios, including the two records it refuses on purpose.

DEFRA hands back a Waste Tracking ID when it takes a record, a unique reference for that movement. It's stored against the movement it belongs to, so the proof that a record was accepted sits with the paperwork rather than in somebody's inbox.

Every movement carries a readiness state the office can see at a glance, so a record that's still missing a signature or a code is obvious before anyone tries to send it. The ones running out of time surface on the dashboard on their own.

When DEFRA's service is busy or briefly unreachable, the record isn't bounced back to the yard as an error for somebody to send again by hand. It's queued and retried for you over the next few hours, and the note says it's queued until it lands.

The regulations let you keep a written record while the service is unavailable, so long as you tell the Environment Agency and everything is uploaded within seven days of it being fixed. CarrierNote holds those records instead of failing them one by one, and says on screen what the law now asks of you. Each held note carries the date it has to be with DEFRA by.

Edit a record you've already filed and it's flagged to resend, because putting an error right is a duty of its own. The update lands on the DEFRA record you already have rather than creating a second one, and the note keeps the history of what changed.

We don't delete waste records or the PDFs behind them, and we don't lock you out of the ones you've already captured if a subscription lapses. A statutory record you're legally required to hold is not a thing to hold over a customer.

Search the whole archive by customer, site, waste type, note number, or the temporary number a driver wrote on a copy in the cab. Narrow it to a status or to hazardous loads only, then open the note and print the same PDF the customer was given.

Pick a period and download the movements in it as a CSV, or the whole archive at once. Alongside it you get the volumes: how much waste you moved by month, by waste type, and by the site you took it to.