Part A · The short answer

For

Landspreading and mobile plant permit holders

Where

England and Wales

Checked

23 September 2026

Landspreading and mobile plant: reporting every load from 1 October 2026.

If you spread waste on land under an environmental permit, you report each load you receive to Defra from 1 October, within two working days. The rules have a field written for deployments. Here is what they ask of you, in plain English, with the regulation behind each answer.

Part B · Am I in?

Am I in from 1 October?

Yes, if you hold an environmental permit for the spreading, including a mobile plant permit that works on deployments. The duty falls on the operator of a permitted facility that receives controlled waste, and nothing in the regulations leaves landspreading out.

Defra's own scope page says the same in fewer words: the service “applies to all permitted: operations, installations and mobile plants”.

• Spreading under a waste exemption (U10, U11) is not in the October phase. Exemption holders come in with Phase 2, which Defra say will be mandatory in October 2027.
• In Scotland and Northern Ireland the date is 1 January 2027, not October.
• Not sure which you hold? The free permit check searches the Environment Agency's register. If your permit is still an application, it won't show there yet, and that doesn't mean you're out.

Part C · Tip now, spread later

What counts as receiving when I tip now and spread later?

The clock starts when the load arrives, not when it goes on the land. Each record holds “the date and time the controlled waste was received”, and it has to be in by the end of the second working day after that day. The record also asks for the operation that is to be applied to the waste (for spreading to benefit agriculture that's usually R10; check your permit). So the spreading is already part of the record you make on arrival. It doesn't start a second one.

One record per load. Five tankers into the same heap or store on one day are five records, not one daily total. You can put them all in at one sitting.

Defra's guidance doesn't mention landspreading by name, so this is read from the regulations themselves. If your set-up is unusual (the waste is stored somewhere under a different permit first, say), ask Defra's helpline on 03000 203 781, Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.

Part D · The deployment field

The deployment reference number

This is the part written for you. As well as your name and permit number, each record must carry a deployment reference number when both of these are true:

• your permitted facility is a mobile plant, and
• a condition of your permit says each deployment of that plant needs the Environment Agency's approval (Natural Resources Wales in Wales).

The number is “the unique number given in the approval for the deployment”. It's on the deployment approval, and it changes with every new deployment. The site address on the record is the address that approval gives as the deployment site, not your office.

In England, Defra's service takes it joined onto your permit number, in the pattern AB1234CD/D1234.

Part E · The day sheet

What a day sheet is, and why it suits a deployment

Most waste tracking software is built for a yard with a gate, a weighbridge and someone in the office when the lorry pulls in. A deployment has none of those. The waste arrives in a field, the driver tips and goes, and the paperwork turns up later.

I built the day sheet for sites like this. You set the usual details for the deployment once: the haulier and their carrier number, the vehicle, the waste code, the R code, and the deployment reference number. After that, each load is one line, and you type two things: the time it came in and the weight.

• No weighbridge needed. The regulations ask whether each weight is “estimated or actual”, so an honest estimate, marked as one, is allowed.
• Each line is its own record, with its own reference, so you keep to one record per load without typing twenty fields twenty times.
• The deployment number goes on every load from the usual details. Nobody has to remember it in the field.
• It runs in a web browser, on a phone or a laptop. There's no app to install.

Try the demo. It has a Day sheet tab set up like a farm, with nothing real and no sign-up.

Part F · Weekly invoices

My haulier invoices weekly. Can I report from the invoice?

Not if you wait for it. The invoice has nothing to do with the deadline. Each load is due two working days after it arrives, so a Monday load reported from a Friday invoice is already two days late.

• Ask the haulier for each day's loads on the day: a text, an email or the drivers' tickets, with the time and the vehicle. The invoice can still come weekly.
• The weight can be an estimate (a tanker's load, say), marked as estimated. You don't have to hold the record back for a weighed figure.
• The haulier's name and carrier number go in once, in the usual details, not on every line.
• If a record does turn out wrong, Defra expect it put right. That's done in Defra's own service for now; the app doesn't send corrections yet.

Part G · What it costs

What it costs

Running several deployments under one permit? Email me before you sign up and I'll tell you in writing how they're counted, so there are no surprises.

Part H · Related

Related guides

• Free permit check: does digital waste tracking apply to your site?
• What permitted sites must do from 1 October 2026, with a source for every point.
• How to get your Defra API code, step by step.
• Report receipt of waste, Defra's own guidance on GOV.UK.

Sources

Where each answer comes from

1. The Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026, SI 2026/729, made 24 June 2026, in force 1 October 2026. Regulation 4(1) (who is in), 4(4) (each load), 4(8) (the deadline); Schedule 1, Part 2, paragraph 2(1)(d) and 2(2)(b) (deployment reference number), 3 (deployment site address), 4 (date and time received), 14 (estimated or actual weight; the D or R code to be applied). Read 23 September 2026.
2. The Digital Waste Tracking (Wales) Regulations 2026, WSI 2026/105, the same deployment field with Natural Resources Wales. Read 23 September 2026.
3. Digital waste tracking: check if you need to report the waste you receive, GOV.UK, updated 7 August 2026. Read 23 September 2026.
4. Report receipt of waste, GOV.UK, updated 15 September 2026 (the £26 charge, Scotland and Northern Ireland dates). Read 23 September 2026.
5. The permit-and-deployment number pattern Defra's service accepts: Defra's published validation code, @defra/waste-movement-utils version 1.11.0, published 22 September 2026.