What Digital Waste Tracking means for you
The practical version, for somebody whose company is already on CarrierNote. What the service is, what it wants from you and when, and what carries on exactly as it does today.
If you carry waste, you have nothing to send DEFRA today
Digital Waste Tracking is DEFRA’s national record for every controlled-waste movement (controlled waste meaning the ordinary business and household waste the rules cover). Where a paper transfer note travels with a load today, the same information goes into one online record instead.
It arrives in phases, and the first covers the sites that take waste in rather than the lorries that bring it. DEFRA issues the code a business needs to those sites, so a carrier cannot get one yet and has nothing to file. Carriers, brokers, and dealers are bound from October 2027. Carrier movements follow the moment DEFRA opens that step, and there is nothing for you to install or switch on when it does.
So the honest answer to “what do I have to do this week”, if you carry waste, is: keep recording your notes in CarrierNote, which already holds them in the shape DEFRA will want. Two jobs become yours when your phase opens, and neither can be ours. You register your business with DEFRA, and you pay DEFRA its charge. The key dates page has the full timetable, including the earlier dates if you also take waste in.
Register with DEFRA, pay the charge, paste the code
Three steps, done once. The same three apply today to anybody who takes waste in at their own permitted site.
You hold your own DEFRA account, and we never pay the charge on your behalf. Register your business on the government’s Digital Waste Tracking service, pay £26 a year for the company, and paste the API code DEFRA issues into the DWT hub in CarrierNote. An API code is the reference DEFRA uses to tell whose record a submission belongs to.
The £26 is DEFRA’s charge for a government service, paid upfront for twelve months from the day you pay it, and it is separate from what you pay us. Until it is paid, DEFRA will not complete a record. If it lapses later, DEFRA answers with “payment required” and the hub shows you that answer word for word. Nothing you have already recorded is affected.
The three steps, with links straight to the DEFRA service, sit on a card in the hub once they apply to you. They are also in Getting started, with what to have to hand. We cannot sort out a DEFRA account for you; their helpdesk is 03000 203 781, Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.
Connected to Digital Waste Tracking
Receiving sites are mandated onto the service from October 2026 in England and Wales, and from January 2027 in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Carriers follow in October 2027.
On the GOV.UK list, connected to the service
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.
The tracking ID lands on the record
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.
See what's ready before you send
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.
A failed send is ours to chase
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.
When DEFRA is down, the law has an answer
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.
Correct a record and it goes back as a correction
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.
The paperwork you keep today keeps counting
Digital Waste Tracking does not switch off the paper trail. A paper waste transfer note is still a lawful record, and it stays one through the changeover, so nobody has to throw the book away on a date. Your duty of care, meaning your legal responsibility for waste you handle from the moment you take it until you hand it on, is unchanged; what changes is where the record of it lives.
Your waste carrier registration is a separate thing from a DEFRA Digital Waste Tracking account. It is issued by your environmental regulator, renewed on its own cycle, and holding one has never meant holding the other.
Retention is unchanged too. A waste transfer note is kept for at least 2 years from the date of transfer, on paper or here, and we never delete one.
What to tell a customer who rings and asks
Businesses that only produce waste are not covered. DEFRA is bringing in the sites that take waste in first, then carriers, brokers, and dealers, and it has yet to decide about producers. So a builder or a shop ringing to ask whether they now have to register with DEFRA can be told no, not at present, and that their duty of care is unchanged. They will still get a transfer note from you for every load, which is what they need to keep.
Your site's date comes before your lorries'
Plenty of carriers also hold a permit for a transfer station or a yard that takes waste in. If that is you, the mandate reaches the site first, so you have two dates rather than one, and the earlier one has already arrived. Both are on the key dates page, and for receiving sites walks through what changes at the gate.
One account covers both. Tick Waste receiver under Business settings and the filing tools appear in the DWT hub, so you are not running two accounts against one company.
Four short answers
Does the £26 cover everyone at my company? It is charged per company, not per person and not per vehicle. If you run two limited companies that both create records, that is two charges; a single company with several trading names is one.
Is there a minimum load before it counts? No. Every controlled-waste movement is in scope, hazardous or not, and there is no minimum weight, so a single bin bag counts.
What if DEFRA moves the dates again? The carrier date has moved once already, by six months. We watch for changes and keep the key dates page current, and a change to the timetable does not affect anything you have already recorded.
Who do I ask when it is DEFRA’s end that is stuck? DEFRA’s own helpdesk, on 03000 203 781. Ask us first if you cannot tell whose end it is, and we will tell you which it is rather than send you round the houses.
Start on the free plan
CarrierNote is on the GOV.UK software provider list, connected to DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking service. Receiving sites are in scope from October 2026 and carriers from October 2027, and you can be recording to DEFRA's standard from your first load, whenever you start.