Digital Waste Tracking Phase 1 vs Phase 2: what's the difference?

DEFRA’s Digital Waste Tracking programme is two separate phases, not one. Mixing them up is the single most common source of confusion for UK waste businesses right now, so here’s the short answer first, then the detail.

Phase 1 covers receiving sites. Phase 2 covers carriers, brokers and dealers. They have different scope, different commencement dates, and (as of writing) different levels of technical detail published by DEFRA.

Phase 1: Receipt of Waste

Phase 1 requires permitted or licensed waste receiving sites (transfer stations, materials recycling facilities, landfill, and similar) in England and Wales to submit waste receipt data digitally to DEFRA, rather than relying on paper records alone.

• England & Wales: mandatory from 1 October 2026.
• Scotland & Northern Ireland: following from 1 January 2027, a second wave of the same Phase 1 rollout.

Phase 1’s technical contract (the Receipt of Waste API) is published, and software providers go through a DEFRA-run Production Approval Test (PAT) before being granted production access. Checkwright’s own PAT results are published here: all 14 scenarios pass, with no exemptions, and DEFRA has confirmed Checkwright meets the requirements.

Phase 2: waste movements

Phase 2 is a separate, later mandate covering waste movements: carriers, brokers and dealers, rather than the sites receiving the waste. This is the much larger addressable part of the programme by business count, since every carrier and skip hire operator in the UK falls into its scope eventually, not just the smaller number of permitted or licensed receiving sites.

Phase 2’s real API schema has not yet been published by DEFRA at the time of writing. Any date given for Phase 2 commencement should be treated as DEFRA’s current indicative planning, not a fixed, technically-contracted deadline the way Phase 1’s 1 October 2026 date is. Checkwright will publish its own Phase 2 integration work, and update this guide, once DEFRA’s schema is actually available to build and test against.

What this means if you’re a carrier or skip hire operator today

If your business only carries or collects waste, rather than operating a permitted receiving site, Phase 1 does not directly require anything from you yet. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do now: digitising your waste transfer notes ahead of Phase 2 means your records are already in the right shape and your drivers are already used to a digital workflow by the time it lands, rather than a scramble later. See our guide on digital waste transfer notes for carriers and skip hire operators.

What this means if you’re a receiving site

If you hold a permit or licence and receive waste, Phase 1 applies to you now (England & Wales) or from 1 January 2027 (Scotland & Northern Ireland). You need software that has gone through DEFRA’s PAT process and has production access, like Checkwright, and your site needs its own EA-issued API code configured in that software before submissions are complete.