Clear responsibilities, reliable information and a routine your team can follow are central to effective digital waste tracking. Advice from CIWM’s webinar with Vaste offers a practical starting point.
Digital reporting starts with people: who records a receipt, who checks the details and who makes sure the submission has been accepted. Make these responsibilities clear across your sites.
Discussing an audience poll during CIWM’s Digital Waste Tracking: Preparing for Implementation webinar, chair Jane Hall identified “staff training and process change” as attendees’ leading concern.
Vaste founder and CEO Evans Chelal and chief technology officer Michael Coll explored those challenges through policy discussion and a software demonstration. Their advice points to six actions receiving-site teams can take.
1. Establish which sites are covered and who takes responsibility
Mandatory reporting began for receiving sites in scope in England and Wales on 1 October 2026. Scotland and Northern Ireland follow on 1 January 2027. Check the current timetable.
Review each site’s activities against the official scope guidance. Permitted or licensed sites receiving controlled waste are the starting point, with specific exclusions requiring attention.
Chelal emphasised that “the responsibility of compliance sits with the permit holder”.
If operations are contracted out, agree who gathers information, checks it, submits records and follows up problems. Record those arrangements so both organisations understand their roles.
2. Set up the right organisation and access
Register through your organisation’s Government Gateway or GOV.UK One Login account. Defra specifies that personal Government Gateway accounts must not be used.
For API reporting, the organisation receives a unique code to connect its software. One organisation’s code can cover its sites; separate organisations receive separate codes. See Defra’s account instructions.
Check that sites and permits are correctly represented in your chosen system, then agree permissions. Who can create a draft? Who reviews it? Who submits it?
Chelal described configuration as “taking whatever governance controls you have onto the system”.
Include cover arrangements. Access and instructions should allow an authorised colleague to pick up the task when the usual reporter is unavailable.
3. Check information before it reaches the submission
Choose a recent receipt and follow its information through your records. Identify the source, the person who can confirm it and anything requiring clarification.
During the demonstration, Coll explained: “So we have to submit what they require.”
The relevant data includes waste classification, carrier and receiving-site details, and hazardous waste or persistent organic pollutants information where applicable.
Vaste demonstrated restricting available waste codes to those associated with a site’s permit. Such controls can help prevent some entry mistakes; they do not establish that a selected code correctly describes a particular waste.
Check that colleagues understand the information they are entering. Make discrepancies visible and identify who will resolve them.
4. Assess software against your actual workload
Defra allows spreadsheet reporting, compatible software connected through an application programming interface, or a combination. Its spreadsheet route is temporary, currently expected to remain available until at least October 2027. Read the service development plans.
Look beyond receipt numbers. Consider repeated entry, information arriving from different systems, checking time and differences between sites.
The demonstration covered individual records, imported batches and integration with existing software. Use these as prompts when assessing providers: ask them to demonstrate a representative day using examples relevant to your operation.
For API software, check the product’s integration and production approval status, including exemptions affecting your waste movements. Consult Defra’s provider guidance.
For spreadsheet reporting, use Defra’s template unchanged and begin a new spreadsheet after submitting it.
Ask how either route handles checking, unsuccessful submissions, amendments, access and support. A demonstration should make the remaining work clear.
5. Build reporting into the working day
Coll recommended making reporting routine: “We recommend doing it every day at the end of your shift”.
That was operational advice. In England and Wales, the standard reporting deadline is two working days, starting on the day after receipt, excluding weekends and bank holidays. For an ordinary Monday receipt, submission and receipt of a unique reference are due by Wednesday at 11:59pm.
Agree when information will be gathered, checked and submitted, with time to investigate problems.
Make outstanding work visible. A record awaiting clarification and one awaiting submission need different follow-up. Decide who monitors each queue and who acts if work accumulates.
6. Confirm acceptance and manage corrections
Make sure the team can distinguish a draft, an unsuccessful submission and a record accepted by the service.
Keep the returned tracking reference associated with the receipt. Acceptance alone does not establish that every reported detail is accurate or that every obligation has been met.
Coll demonstrated amending an existing record while retaining its reference. Ask your provider how updates are confirmed and how colleagues can review the history.
Current England and Wales guidance requires errors to be corrected promptly and within one month of discovery. Submission errors notified by the service must be corrected within the original two-working-day window.
“Do you have your teams in place? Have you started training?”
Existing requirements also continue: complete applicable transfer and consignment notes and maintain required waste returns. Check reporting, correction and documentation requirements.
Bring these steps together in a supervised walkthrough involving the people who do the work. Include an uncertain detail, an amendment and cover for an absent colleague. Record what needs resolving, who will take it forward and when they will report back.
Give each person a practical task. For example, ask a colleague providing cover to explain where carrier information comes from, how they would raise a discrepancy and where they would check whether reporting had succeeded.
Use an appropriate demonstration or training environment for practice. Any hesitation gives you a specific training action. Keep short instructions beside the task and revisit them when the service or software changes.
Chelal’s readiness questions remain useful: “Do you have your teams in place? Have you started training?”
Include operational colleagues supplying information, so the reporting lead can see the whole process from arrival through to confirmed submission, with clear responsibility at handover.
Put this advice into practice with CIWM
Join the CIWM’s online workshop Digital Waste Tracking in Practice: From Spreadsheets to API Reporting on 3 December 2026, 13:00–15:30, to learn how to complete and submit Defra’s spreadsheet, assess reporting options for your sites and put your questions to specialists.
Leave with practical next steps for your team.
