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Digital waste tracking in Northern Ireland starts on 1 January 2027, not October. What is settled and what is not published yet.

Tuesday 27 October 2026. Type “digital waste tracking Northern Ireland” into a search box tonight and you will be told two different dates. Plenty of guides say Northern Ireland started on 1 October with England and Wales. It did not. Northern Ireland starts on 1 January 2027, nine weeks from now.

We know how the wrong date gets around, because our own front page carried it in August until we read GOV.UK properly. So here is what the official pages say, in their words, and the part nobody can tell you yet.

October or January: it is January

GOV.UK puts it in one sentence: “From October 2026 (January 2027 in Northern Ireland and Scotland), all organisations that are licensed or permitted to receive waste must use the new report receipt of waste service.” The software provider page, updated last Friday, gives the day: 1 January 2027. DAERA and NetRegs say the same month.

What each official source says about Northern Ireland, read on 27 October 2026. The marked row is the one still empty.
Source Northern Ireland
GOV.UK, Report receipt of waste “From October 2026 (January 2027 in Northern Ireland and Scotland)”
GOV.UK, Choose a software provider “In Northern Ireland and Scotland this comes into effect on 1 January 2027.”
DAERA “will become mandatory in Northern Ireland from January 2027”
NetRegs “becomes mandatory in January 2027”
legislation.gov.uk Regulations for England, Wales and Scotland. Nothing for Northern Ireland yet.

It covers you if you run an ATF, a scrap yard or any other site licensed to receive waste. GOV.UK says “all organisations that are licensed or permitted to receive waste”, and NetRegs, the guidance DAERA writes with SEPA, names scrap yards in the first phase. Carriers, brokers and dealers follow in October 2027.

What is not written down yet

England, Wales and Scotland each have their own regulations on legislation.gov.uk. That is where the detail lives: how long you have to report each load, what counts as a working day, what happens if you do not. On 27 October we searched again and Northern Ireland’s were not there. The government’s own plan had “all nations to have laid secondary legislation” by summer 2026. Summer has been and gone.

So we will not tell you your deadline per load. All three of the others chose the end of the second working day after the load arrives, and Northern Ireland may well do the same. But that is a guess, and a gate should not run on a guess. Plan on January, set up as if the rules will match everyone else’s, and ask DAERA, which GOV.UK names as the department to contact for Northern Ireland.

What is settled for a Northern Ireland yard and what waits on the regulations. The marked rows are still open.
  Northern Ireland
Start 1 January 2027 (GOV.UK)
Who to ask DAERA
The service Defra’s report receipt of waste, the same as England
The charge £26 a year per organisation, first payment by 31 January 2027
Fixing a mistake Within one month of noticing it (NetRegs)
Deadline per load Not published. England, Wales and Scotland all chose two working days
What counts as a working day Not published

What you can do this week

The service is open now. DAERA says the public beta for waste receivers started in April 2026, so nothing stops you reporting real loads before the duty starts. England has had four weeks of it. This is what yards there learned.

  1. Register the organisation with the company’s login. GOV.UK: “You must not use a personal Government Gateway account for this service”. Find out who holds the company one before you need it.
  2. Copy the API code from the screen. It appears as soon as the organisation is registered. It is five groups of letters and numbers. A code typed with four groups looks right and bounces every receipt.
  3. Pick your software, or the spreadsheet. It is one Defra service and one approved list for the whole UK, and the list names Northern Ireland. Defra’s spreadsheet is legal too. NetRegs calls it a temporary solution.
  4. Book in real cars in December. The first live receipt should not also be your first go. A week of practice costs nothing and shows you every question the gate will ask.
  5. Put the £26 in the diary. GOV.UK: “The first payment is due by 31 January 2027.” It is per organisation, not per site.

What BreakerHQ does

BreakerHQ reports to the same Defra service, and yards in England have reported through it every day since 1 October. There is nothing to install and no training to book. Sign in on the phone or tablet you already have, put in your permit or licence number and the Defra code, and you are booking in your first car in under fifteen minutes.

Three honest gaps for a yard in Northern Ireland. The screens quote England’s regulation numbers and name the Environment Agency. The carrier check reads England’s public register only, and says so when it cannot find a Northern Irish carrier. And the due-date line on each receipt counts England’s two working days. Until Northern Ireland publishes its own rule, nobody can tell you whether that line is right for you, including us.

Sign in and start

The search box will keep giving you two dates for a while yet. Only one of them is on GOV.UK, and it is 1 January.

Sources