Site authorisation number is not in a valid UK format

The message DEFRA sends

"receiver.authorisationNumber" must be in a valid UK format

The usual cause

• A stray character in the number, or a space where the format has none.
• The number is from another document, such as a carrier registration number.
• The number is for a different kind of authorisation from the formats DEFRA checks.

How to fix it

1. Copy the number from the site's environmental permit or waste management licence.
2. Check it against the patterns below.

Fix the value in your software or spreadsheet, then send the receipt again.

Some of the patterns the validator accepts

• England and Wales: two letters, four digits, two letters, for example AB1234CD, with EPR/ in front if the permit is written that way.
• England: EAWML or WML followed by five or six digits.
• Scotland: PPC/ then A, W, E or N, or WML/ then L, W, E or N, then a slash and seven digits, for example PPC/A/1234567, or EAS/P/ and six digits.
• Northern Ireland: P, four digits, /, two digits and a letter, or WPPC, a space, and two pairs of digits split by a slash, for example WPPC 12/34.

Sources

• DEFRA waste-movement-utils on GitHub: the shared validator code that DEFRA's receipt services pin, published under the Open Government Licence
• DEFRA waste-tracking-service on GitHub: the Receipt API specification

The message wording and the formats listed come from DEFRA's validator code, version 1.18.0, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The causes and fixes are our reading of its rules.