Draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chair: † Martin Vickers

† Beales, Danny (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)

† Bishop, Matt (Forest of Dean) (Lab)

† Collins, Tom (Worcester) (Lab)

† Creagh, Mary (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

† Eagle, Maria (Liverpool Garston) (Lab)

Farron, Tim (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)

† Gilmour, Rachel (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)

† Hudson, Dr Neil (Epping Forest) (Con)

† McKinnell, Catherine (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)

† McMahon, Jim (Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton) (Lab/Co op)

† Morris, Joe (Hexham) (Lab)

† Pakes, Andrew (Peterborough) (Lab/Co op)

† Paul, Rebecca (Reigate) (Con)

† Rhodes, Martin (Glasgow North) (Lab)

† Shastri Hurst, Dr Neil (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)

† Walker, Imogen (Hamilton and Clyde Valley) (Lab)

† Whittingdale, Sir John (Maldon) (Con)

Aaron Kulakiewicz, Committee Clerk

† attended the Committee

The following also attended (Standing Order No. 118(2)):

Milne, John (Horsham) (LD)

Second Delegated Legislation Committee

Tuesday 16 June 2026

[Martin Vickers in the Chair]

Draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026

I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I begin by wishing my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North a happy significant birthday, and I look forward to celebrating with her later and at various points throughout the week ahead.

The draft regulations were laid before the House on 23 April this year. More than 200 million tonnes of waste are produced in the UK each year, and there is currently no comprehensive way of tracking it. Legislation relating to the transport, management and description of waste has been introduced in a piecemeal fashion over the last 30 years. Large amounts of waste movement data recorded through the current system are either not collected or are required to be submitted only each quarter and, of course, they are collected on a paper based system. As a result, at a national level, it is difficult to determine where waste is from and what happens to it. At a local level, it is difficult for waste producers to check that their waste has been handled appropriately.

The system’s lack of transparency gives waste criminals opportunities to undercut legitimate waste businesses and to cause harm to our environment and communities. This crime costs the UK economy an estimated £1 billion each year, due to activities such as fly tipping, deliberate misclassification of waste to avoid paying landfill taxes, illegal waste exports and the operation of illegal waste sites. For investigations, regulators usually need to request individual waste records by serving legal notices, which is time consuming and prone to document falsification.

Replacing the outdated paper based system will give the Environment Agency much needed compliance oversight and help to close the loopholes that rogue operators exploit. The regulations will support those who do the right thing, not those who undercut them and think that “muck” is an accurate waste description or that providing a partial postcode for the source of waste is acceptable. By requiring near real time information about waste movements to be recorded on a centralised system, the regulations will enable officers to identify unusual patterns, pinpoint high risk operators, intervene earlier and shape targeted initiatives.

We are shifting from reactive investigation to proactive prevention. The regulations are the crucial first step in transforming the waste industry so that regulators—the Environment Agency—have timely data on waste movements from production right through to disposal.

The previous Government consulted on these reforms way back in 2022. They responded to the consultation the following year, but critically, they did not introduce these changes. This Government are acting. The first set of regulations will mandate that waste receivers operating under an environmental permit make a digital record of waste that comes into their facilities and submit that information to the digital waste tracking system within two working days of the waste being received. A second statutory instrument will be laid before the House next year to extend requirements to capture the full end to end waste journey information.

Before I turn to the detail of the legislation, I acknowledge the work of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Its report highlighted a point of interest on how digital waste tracking will interact with the new packaging extended producer responsibility scheme, or pEPR. Of course, once it is fully implemented next year, the data submitted to the digital waste tracking system will help to reduce fraud in the pEPR system as well.

I turn to the detail of the legislation, which provides a new statutory framework to tackle the problem of waste tracking. It designates the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to establish, maintain and operate the digital system. It requires that permitted waste receivers make digital records of specified information, as set out in schedule 1, before submitting it on to the system. There is a requirement for operators to pay an annual fee of £26, which will be used to recoup the costs of establishing, operating and maintaining the system.

Although there will also be transition costs to businesses of just over £1.5 million over four years between 2026 and 2029, and costs to obtain software estimated at under £39 million over 15 years, those costs are significantly outweighed by the future benefits of businesses no longer having to submit quarterly waste returns and, of course, the reduction in waste crime, which gives legitimate operators more waste to legitimately dispose of. Together, those savings are estimated at nearly £600 million over the 15-year appraisal period. As the illegal businesses—the criminals—leave the industry, there will be reduced unfair competition, more waste for the compliant operators and increased revenue.

The draft regulations introduce a new offence of failing to comply with the legislation and make provision for criminal penalties and civil sanctions, with unlimited fines available to punish offenders. Those who try to commit fraud by entering false information on to the system can also be prosecuted under section 44 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and receive up to two years in prison.

The introduction of digital waste tracking is a cornerstone of the Government’s waste crime action plan, the toughest ever crackdown on illegal waste activity. Through the action plan, we are strengthening regulations; pursuing the criminals responsible with more boots on the ground, more drones in the air, advanced technologies and stronger punishments; and accelerating the clean up effort.

We are doubling the Environment Agency’s enforcement budget with an additional £45 million over the next three financial years, on top of the £5.6 million increase we had already announced for this financial year—£50 million in total over three years. That will bring waste crime enforcement funding to more than £30 million a year, compared with a miserly £10 million a year in 2023-24.

We believe in regulation for the environment, whether that is in the water sector, as we heard today with the Secretary of State’s statement to the House, or in the waste system. We are also introducing the waste carriers, brokers and dealers reform, tightening the waste exemption system and giving courts the powers to put up to nine points on the licences of fly tippers.

My message to the waste criminals is clear: we are coming for you, we will track you down and there is no longer anywhere to hide.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Vickers. I thank the Minister for introducing the draft regulations to the Committee.

It is good to see the Government building on the progress made by the previous Conservative Government, who laid the foundation for digital waste tracking to be introduced by passing the landmark Environment Act 2021. Additional measures introduced by the Conservatives that sought to tackle waste crime include increasing the upper limit for fixed penalties to ensure proportionate and effective enforcement action. The previous Government also provided 30 local authorities with grants to enhance resources to tackle fly tipping. The grants supported a range of projects such as CCTV, anti climb fencing and better waste infrastructure.

Does the hon. Gentleman have any insight into why the previous Government did not follow through and actually implement the regulations they consulted on?

I am very proud of the previous Conservative Government passing the landmark Environment Act. We consulted and brought forward measures to tackle waste crime, and I am very pleased that the Labour Government have taken the baton forward and are enacting some of the measures that we started.

Sadly, my constituents have also been faced with the blight of fly tipping in our communities, with many serious cases caused by shameless criminals who should face the full extent of the law. It not only harms communities and the environment, but threatens the precious wildlife and biodiversity that the forest of Epping Forest is so privileged to enjoy. I must pay tribute to the litter picking groups across Epping Forest, including the Waltham Abbey community group and Theydon Bois parish council, who regularly roll up their sleeves to fight the scourge of waste carelessly dumped. I have had the pleasure of joining that fantastic community in action on many occasions.

When I have joined community groups on litter picks, it has been particularly concerning to see an abundance of discarded large nitrous oxide canisters. They are used illegally for drug misuse and then discarded on the side of roads to be cleared up by those who do the right thing. Any activity to clear up waste, such as the measure we are discussing, needs to address this issue as a priority for urban, rural and semi rural communities alike. Can the Minister outline what steps the Government are taking to tackle the illegal use of nitrous oxide and the damaging discarding of those dangerous canisters in our environment?

I welcome the cross party support for tackling waste crime. Not only does it cost the English economy about £1 billion a year, but it has become interlinked with criminal gangs who profit from breaking the law. We should all be deeply concerned that an estimated 20% of all waste is illegally managed. Importantly, the regulations have the full co operation of the devolved Administrations, which is vital to ensure that we have an effective regime that works for waste operators.

As the Minister will be aware, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee noted that the Government need to clarify exactly how the digital waste tracking regime will interact with the new extended producer responsibility —she made some comments on that point. Under the packaging scheme, producers will have to pay the costs of dealing with household packaging waste and provide information about its disposal. I hope she can provide further clear and practical information on that, particularly as many businesses have expressed strong concerns about the timing of the implementation of the EPR regime, which will add costs to businesses when the Chancellor is already taxing them hugely and making their lives very difficult.

The Minister might be aware that His Majesty’s most loyal Opposition hosted a food and farming emergency summit last year to which key stakeholders, including food producers, were invited. A key demand from that summit was a call for the Government to conduct a rapid review of EPR for the food, drink and hospitality sectors. The shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), wrote to the Government to ask them to act on that. It was disappointing that the Government did not consider the merit of such a request from the businesses directly affected by the policy.

Ministers are always keen to emphasise their desire to transition to a circular economy in which we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract maximum value from them, minimise waste and promote resource efficiency. That goal is shared by all. However, aside from introducing individual measures here and there, the Government have yet to publish their clear circular economy strategy. As I understand it, the circular economy taskforce was established for the very purpose of creating a strategy. Will the Minister clarify when she anticipates further details will be published?

In my constituency, we have already paid dearly the price of waste crime and seen its impacts on our city and the surrounding area, so I really welcome this measure. I think most people would expect that we use digital tools these days to track, trace and gather data on the movements of value streams like this one. As we move forward into a more circular economy and see higher energy waste streams being handled, that becomes all the more important. As an officer in the all party parliamentary group on critical infrastructure and heritage crime, it is good to see measures coming into place to tackle those areas of crime as well.

I note that the regulation introduces a fee and I am interested in the future value for money of that fee. In particular, I note that the Secretary of State has responsibility for the operation of the digital waste tracking system, but it is not clear how that will be administered in practice or to whom the fee will be paid.

Can the Minister explain the Secretary of State’s intention on the day to day administration of the waste tracking system? Will that be done by the Environment Agency, some other public body, or will it be contracted out to a private entity?

Will the Minister also comment on the development of the software? I note from the accompanying papers that it is currently in a private beta test stage, but the optimism bias being used is 400%. Does that indicate a problem or some very high uncertainty on the final areas of development of that software?

Apart from those small details, I strongly welcome the regulations and all the Department’s work.

I rise to speak on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, who broadly support the establishment of a digital system to track the movement of controlled waste. We have long campaigned—as people would expect us to—for stronger waste regulation and enforcement to protect our environment and tackle waste crime after years of inaction by the Conservative Government. As waste is a devolved matter, with separate legislation and systems being developed in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Government must work closely with the devolved Administrations to ensure that these digital systems are interoperable and provide effective coverage across the whole UK.

Although we support the draft regulations, we urge the Government to go further in tackling the waste crime national emergency by taking up our calls to increase fixed penalty notices for fly tipping to £2,500, transferring responsibility for investigating major waste crime to the National Crime Agency, and introducing rewards of more than £5,000 for information leading to a successful prosecution of criminal gangs.

It is a pleasure to respond to that short but pithy and valuable debate. I am grateful to the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Epping Forest, for his comments. He is beginning to remind me a bit of St Augustine, who was famous for his prayer of, “Grant me chastity, Oh Lord, but not yet”, because, as he said, he laid the foundations for some of this work while in government. That includes the EPR system, which he voted for in 2024 along with all his Conservative colleagues. He now stands loudly lamenting EPR, but I just remind him that it is something that his party developed in government and voted for less than two years ago.

I share the hon. Gentleman’s frustration about NOx canisters. I am still mystified as to why they are on sale in the UK. I know they are useful for whipping cream, but we see when we go on Amazon, as I did a couple of years ago, that people who bought NOx canisters also bought little canisters to sell it for £1, £2, or whatever it is they do to create further litter. It is absolutely clear that there is not a sudden, massive interest in whipping cream across the festivals and parklands of this great nation.

In fact, nitrous oxide is a highly regulated substance and a fluorinated gas that we need for some medical emergencies. I remember the glory days of British dentistry, where any time someone went for a filling they got the happy gas so that they did not really mind what was happening to their teeth. Those of us who are old enough will remember that—[Interruption.] I can see nods of recognition. There were various bans of nitrous oxide, but it is still used for women in childbirth. If we have a quota for fluorinated gas, under various UN conventions, we should keep that quota but reduce it and save it for absolutely medically necessary issues, and not allow a huge black market to proliferate in this thing that is allegedly used for whipping cream.

Last Friday, I was out picking up litter and a variety of other things, including a wendy house, that had been fly tipped in Willenhall in Coventry, and I picked up three nitrous oxide canisters. The day before that I had been to an incinerator, an energy from waste plant, where they had shown me how these canisters can burn at incredibly high temperatures. They told me that the canisters should never be put into any sort of incineration, because that presents a danger to workers both on the journey towards incineration and at the incinerator—even though they can come out of the incinerator safely because they are tested to such a high engineering capacity. I thought, “Right, I will not just leave these canisters for the council to pick up; I will take them to a metals recycling facility.” I took them to European Metals Recycling, which is close to my office in Coventry, where I was told, “We don’t take these.” I am not clear where these canisters are meant to be safely disposed of, and if I am the waste Minister and I do not know, I am not clear what everyone else is supposed to be doing. I will start my little battle on NOS—watch this space.

Let me talk to some of the other points that were raised. First, charities and local authorities will have to pay the fees. With this waste system, we have essentially mirrored what His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has done through Making Tax Digital. We have done something that is legible and readable through the back end and that can be used by proprietary software providers, rather than building our own proprietary software and making it clunky and rubbish, which is what Government software schemes are famous for doing. We thought, “How can we turn this on its head and do something that can be used and is fungible and readable across other databases?” We watched what had happened with HMRC and fundamentally designed that in.

The system is in beta testing because I believe in making haste slowly. I do not believe in big bang changes. I believe in working with a coalition of the willing to test, refine and improve. The fee is set at £26. That includes charities, local authorities—anyone operating permitted waste facilities where commercial waste activities are carried out. The fee recovers the cost of establishing, operating and maintaining the services. It includes costs for things like the digital system build, the ongoing hosting cost and the operation of the helpdesk for users, which is run through the Environment Agency.

The total costs were estimated over a 10-year period and averaged over the total number of operators expected to be using the service once it has been fully delivered, ensuring that those in the first phase will not pay more, so people are not penalised for being one of the good guys. That approach has been agreed by Treasury. We intend to review the service charge once the system is fully operational and we have more accurate data about the number of users on the system. Of course, one of the issues is that lots of people are not on the system, and we do not know where they are, so we will amend the service charge through legislation as needed. The service fee is paid annually to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by users as part of their account registration.

One of the main aims of introducing digital waste tracking is to reduce waste crime. Regulators need to distinguish between someone who is digitally excluded and someone who is deliberately not complying with the regulations. There are provisions in the statutory instrument for the digitally excluded—although in this day and age, if someone is running a company without any sort of computer, we do have to wonder. By not having a criminal sanction for failing to apply for a digitally excluded number or recording that number on written records, it may give the impression that this is less important than digital users applying. It may lead to digitally excluded operators choosing not to comply and there would be gaps in waste movement records, which would undermine the whole system, so we have included that.

On  packaging extended producer responsibility, one of the questions that has been around for at least the last decade—it is not a new one; the hon. Member for Epping Forest will have heard it, as I have—is about the need to reduce fraud in the producer responsibility note and the producer export responsibility note system. We have already introduced a number of measures to address that fraud. All reprocessors and exporters who handle any packaging waste will now have to register, collect and report data on packaging waste received, processed, rejected and exported.

The pERP regulation will place requirements on accredited reprocessors and exporters, including monthly reporting of packaging waste reprocessed or exported and monthly data on packaging recovery notes/packaging export recycling note prices by material. Exporters will need to provide proof of receipt at the final overseas destination site to issue a PERN and retain records of the recycling of the packaging waste. Critically, there will also be a new fit and proper person test for operators as part of the accreditation process. In addition, DEFRA has recently consulted on further proposals to enhance the PRN system, target fraud and ensure that packaging waste is managed in an environmentally sustainable way. The results of that consultation will be published shortly.

Digital waste tracking is being introduced in phases, but we intend to mandate the recoding of information about exports of green list waste, also known as article 18 waste, in the system from 2027. So it will come here in April next year and we will look to introduce it from October 2027. The increased visibility of export data will also help to combat fraud in the system.

On litter, local authorities already have powers to take enforcement action. We have been encouraging them to make good use of those powers, because under the previous Government they did not have the cash to pursue prosecutions and actions against offenders. We have published new statutory litter enforcement guidance: “Litter enforcement powers—when and how to use them”. Local authorities now have a legal duty to have regard to that guidance, which will lead to a more consistent approach to tackling litterers across the country.

We have also published a refreshed code of practice on litter and refuse, which sets out the standards expected of local authorities and other duty bodies with regard to keeping land clear of litter and refuse. I pay tribute to the many Wombles and clean up squads across the country that are doing such great work, but we want to get to a stage where there is no littering and people understand and respect the areas around them.

I will add a final thought on fly tipping: councils already have powers to seize and search the vehicles of suspected fly tippers. Again, to support them making better use of that power, we have published best practice guidance and case studies on the website of the National Fly Tipping Prevention Group. We have also secured powers in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 to provide statutory fly tipping enforcement guidance on using their powers and powers for the courts to award between three and nine penalty points on the driving licences of those found guilty of fly tipping. Often, we find that fly tippers are doing a little job for their mates on the weekend. They might be drivers in the week, and this is a little weekend side hustle. The penalty points would make it harder for offenders to continue dumping illegally if they are disqualified from driving and send a clear warning: fly tipping is not to be tolerated.

I congratulate the Government on the efforts being made on fly tipping. We can quite often skirt over just how important these issues are, but in areas where fly tipping is common, it absolutely ruins the local community. I put on record our appreciation for the work that is being done.

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. I also pay tribute to his council in Oldham, which wrote to me about a very thought provoking motion that the council passed. The leader of the council—I am sorry; his name escapes me—said that environmental justice goes hand in hand with social justice. These environmental crimes are predominantly perpetrated against poorer communities. There is a kind of social injustice there that we must not lose sight of. There are certain parts of Coventry that are spotless and have no litter or fly tipping, and other areas, like Foleshill, the ward where my office is, where fly tipping is absolutely endemic.

I will conclude by talking about our manifesto commitment to forcing fly tippers and vandals to clean up their mess. We will soon consult on giving local councils the powers to issue fly tippers with conditional cautions, one of a range of pre court community based sanctions that could see offenders completing up to 20 hours of unpaid work cleaning up streets and parks and paying back the cost of cleaning up the waste that they have dumped on public land. If an offender admits to the crime, agrees to the caution and complies with those conditions, they will not face prosecution. Anyone who spends a couple of hours cleaning up litter and sweating in the hot sun, as I did on Friday in Willenhall, will be very keen not to repeat the experience.

Nationwide waste tracking does not exist, so the costs are uncertain at the moment because we do not have a baseline to go from. However, we have used HMRC’s Making Tax Digital as an assumption as it is a similar digital delivery policy. We have put in a 400% optimism bias to account for underestimation because we do not know what we do not know—the unknown unknowns. There are more firms in scope for Making Tax Digital compared with digital waste tracking—obviously, because not everyone is doing waste. Therefore, economies of scale will differ.

With that, I thank the Committee for its attention, good humour and positive comments this afternoon. I commend the fact that the legislation is widely supported by stakeholders for whom it could not come soon enough and who have been begging for it since the previous Government’s waste and litter strategy was published back in 2019. The hon. Member for Epping Forest asked about the circular economy growth plan. That is going through the normal Government channels and processes. I am sure he will be very excited when it is eventually produced, because that is our whole economy plan: to be a resilient, clean and highly efficient materials nation. The legislation has been highly anticipated by our stakeholders. I am delighted that it is supported by Members on both sides of the House and am thrilled to have been able to present it here today.

Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That the Committee has considered the draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026.

Committee rose.