How WasteLinks Works at the Gate: Logging a Load and Reporting It to DEFRA

Every conversation we have with a receiving site about Digital Waste Tracking starts in the same place. Not with the reporting itself, which nobody enjoys but everybody accepts, but with a quieter question underneath it. Who is actually going to do this, and when, on a normal Tuesday when three lorries are waiting and the yard is loud?

That question is the whole design problem. From 1 October 2026, permitted sites in England, Wales and Northern Ireland must report every load of controlled waste they receive to DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking service by the end of the second working day after it arrives. Scotland follows in January 2027. The rule is simple to state and awkward to live with, because the information exists at the gate and the reporting usually happens in an office, hours or days later, from a pile of paperwork that has already been handled twice.

So we built for the gate first and the office second. This is how it works.

The two working day clock is the real problem

It is tempting to think the hard part is the data. It is not. The fields DEFRA asks for are mostly things your site already knows: the waste code, a description, the quantity, how it arrived, who brought it, and where anything hazardous is concerned, the consignment note code or a reason it is missing.

The hard part is knowing what you have not done yet. A load that arrives on Friday afternoon is due by Tuesday. A load that arrives on the Tuesday before a bank holiday is due later than you think. Nothing about a spreadsheet or a stack of tickets tells you, at nine o'clock on a Monday morning, which movements are still sitting inside their window and which ones are about to fall out of it.

That is why the first screen we built was not the form. It is a list of every load that has not been submitted, each one showing the time remaining before its deadline. Once a record has been sent, that same column stops being a countdown and starts showing the reference DEFRA gave back for it. One column, two jobs, and the thing you most need to know is the thing you see first.

What the gate is actually like

A weighbridge is not a desk. The person logging the load may be wearing gloves, holding a ticket in one hand and a phone in the other, with a lorry waiting behind them and rain coming in sideways. Whatever they are asked to do has to survive that, and it has to be learnable without a training session, because the person doing it on Saturday may not be the person who was shown how on Thursday.

It also has to be possible not to do it at the gate at all. Some days the weather wins, or the yard is too busy, or the sun is at the angle where nobody can read a screen. That is the honest reason the two working day window exists, and our flow is built to use it. Photograph the ticket while it is still in your hand and finish the record later in the office. Or log the whole thing at the desk from the tickets, with the dashboard showing you what is still outstanding. The thing that has to happen at the gate is capturing the paperwork before it is lost or buried. Completing the form in the rain is optional, and we would rather you did not.

That ruled out several things straight away. It ruled out anything that requires typing a waste code from memory, because a mistyped code is an invalid record that comes back later as a problem. Every code on our form is chosen from the official list, all eight hundred and forty two of them, filtered as you type. It ruled out long forms that assume a keyboard. And it ruled out anything that only works when the office computer is switched on.

The primary device is the phone, and the primary flow takes about a minute. Photograph the paperwork that came with the load. The details are read off it and dropped into the form for you. You check them, correct anything that needs correcting, and submit.

That middle step is not a formality and we will not remove it. Machine reading is very good and it is not perfect, and the person submitting the record is its legal author, not the software. So the button says check and submit, never just submit, and nothing is ever sent on your behalf without a human looking at it first. If the photo is unreadable, or the ticket is a scrawl, or there is no paperwork at all, typing it in by hand is a first class path rather than a fallback buried in a menu.

What comes back, and why it matters more than what goes out

When DEFRA accepts a record, it returns a waste tracking reference. That reference is the thing an auditor will eventually ask about, and it is the part most systems treat as an afterthought.

We store it on the record, show it on screen next to the load it belongs to, make it copyable in one tap because gate staff work on tablets, and include it in the CSV export. So when someone asks you eighteen months from now to evidence a movement, the answer is an export rather than a hunt through a portal for a login that belonged to someone who has since left.

Corrections work the same way. If a weight was wrong or a code needs changing, the amendment reuses the original reference rather than creating a second record, so your history stays a single thread per load rather than two records that disagree.

Hazardous waste is included in all of this rather than sold as an upgrade. Consignment note codes, hazard properties, POPs, the reason codes for when a consignment note has not travelled with the load. If your site takes hazardous waste, the awkward parts are exactly the parts you need the software to handle.

Who actually does it, and who is allowed to change things

The person on the gate and the person who runs the company are rarely the same person, and they need very different powers. So the account has two roles and the split follows the risk.

Anyone on the account can log a load and amend one. That is the job, it happens all day, and putting it behind a manager's login would guarantee the record gets written later from memory instead of at the moment the lorry is weighed.

Only the account owner can do the things that are hard to undo. Adding a site, linking a site to its DEFRA registration, changing the membership, closing the account. If a member tries, they are told plainly to ask whoever set the account up, rather than being shown a permission error they cannot act on.

In practice that means a weighbridge operator, a yard supervisor and a transport clerk can all be logging loads on their own logins, while the site's registration details stay in one pair of hands. Every record carries who submitted it, which matters when someone asks about a movement months later.

The standard plan covers up to three sites and up to five people. The group plan covers up to ten sites and up to ten people. Those are two separate limits rather than a range, so a single site with five staff on shift is comfortably inside the standard plan.

Where the submission actually goes

Our integration connects directly to DEFRA's service and has passed their production approval testing, which means it was exercised against the full set of acceptance scenarios the service requires, from a straightforward household load through to hazardous movements carrying consignment notes. Records are submitted under your own permit and your own Digital Waste Tracking registration. We are the software you use; the record remains yours.

If DEFRA's service is briefly unavailable, nothing stops at the gate. The record queues and retries, every attempt is logged, and the load carries on being unloaded. A weighbridge should never wait on a server.

What we are building next

Two things, and we would rather say what they are than let them arrive as a surprise.

The first is the native app. The gate flow described above runs in the browser on a phone today, which works well and installs to a home screen in two taps. The same screens are moving into our iOS app so the camera is faster, the gate QR code can be scanned from the same place, and the two working day clock can push a notification rather than waiting for someone to log in and look.

The second is the weighbridge computer. A large share of receiving sites run their day from a Windows PC in a cabin, and that machine, not a phone, is where their working life happens. We are building toward a desktop version that installs on Windows, and on Mac for the sites that prefer it, so a load can be logged on the same screen as everything else. We are not going to put a date on that yet, because the honest sequence is to get the phone and browser experience right for October first. But it is coming, and it is coming because sites asked for it rather than because it demos well.

What it costs

Thirty nine pounds a month covers up to three sites and up to five people on the account, with hazardous included and no commission on anything. Ten sites and ten people are ninety nine pounds, and larger estates are priced individually. It is free to use up to the 1 October deadline, so you can run it against real loads and decide with evidence rather than a demo.

Worth knowing separately: DEFRA charges its own flat fee of twenty six pounds a year per legal entity to use the tracking service, paid on the anniversary of your first use. That is per company rather than per site or per movement, and it is not something any software provider can waive.

Frequently asked questions

When do receiving sites have to start reporting?

From 1 October 2026 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and from January 2027 in Scotland. Every load of controlled waste received must be reported by the end of the second working day after it arrives.

Do I need my own DEFRA registration to use WasteLinks?

Yes, and that is deliberate. Records are submitted under your own permit and your own Digital Waste Tracking registration, so the record belongs to your site rather than to us. If you do not have one yet, that is normal, and we walk you through getting one when you add your site.

What happens if the photo of the ticket is unreadable?

You type it in. Manual entry is a first class path on both the phone and the desktop, not a hidden fallback, and the codes are still chosen from the official list so a hand typed record is no more error prone than a photographed one.

Does WasteLinks submit records automatically?

No, and this is a deliberate choice. Details read from a photograph are prefilled for you to check, and nothing is sent until a person confirms it. The operator is the legal author of the record, so a human always sees it before it goes.

Can I correct a record after it has been submitted?

Yes. Amendments reuse the original waste tracking reference rather than creating a duplicate record, so each load keeps a single history.

Does it handle hazardous waste?

Yes, at no extra cost. That includes consignment note codes, hazard properties, POPs, and the reason codes DEFRA accepts when a consignment note has not travelled with the load.

How many people can use one account?

Five on the standard plan and ten on the group plan, alongside the site limits of three and ten. Everyone on the account can log and amend loads. Only the owner can add sites, link DEFRA registrations, or change the membership.

What does it cost?

Thirty nine pounds a month for up to three sites, ninety nine pounds for up to ten, and individual pricing above that. Hazardous is included and there is no commission. It is free to use up to the 1 October deadline, and you can cancel at any time.