The Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026

Explanatory note

Reproduced verbatim from the instrument as published on legislation.gov.uk (Crown Copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0). The note is prepared by the responsible government department and is not part of the instrument itself.

These Regulations are the first to be made under powers in section 34CA and 34CB of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (c. 43) (“ the 1990 Act ”). They establish, in England, a digital waste tracking system, the purpose of which is to track controlled waste.

Controlled waste is household, industrial or commercial waste (see section 75(4) to (8) of the 1990 Act).

Part 2 (regulations 3 to 7) and Schedule 1 contain provisions relating to the establishment of the digital waste tracking system and default requirements for operators of a permitted facility to ensure the entry of information about controlled waste into the digital waste tracking system and to pay an annual fee. This Part also makes provision for outages (when information cannot be entered into the digital waste tracking system) and the correction of errors in the digital waste tracking system.

Part 3 (regulations 8 to 12) contain provisions relating to digitally excluded persons, including alternative requirements for recording information that would otherwise be required to be entered into the digital waste tracking system under Part 2.

Part 4 (regulations 13 and 14) contains provision about functions of the Environment Agency.

Part 5 (regulations 15 to 24) and Schedule 2 contain provisions relating to offences and civil sanctions.

Part 6 (regulations 25 to 27) contains provisions about appeals.

Part 7 (regulations 28 to 30) contains supplementary provisions including those governing Environment Agency access to information in the digital waste tracking system and persons with whom information held under these Regulations can be shared.

A full impact assessment of the effect that this instrument will have on the costs of business, the voluntary sector and the public sector is published alongside these Regulations on www.legislation.gov.uk and available from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Seacole Building, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF.