The month starts when you notice. Correcting a receipt Defra already holds.
Sunday 18 October 2026, and in a good few yards the first three weeks of receipts are being read back at the kitchen table. Most of them are right. One has the carrier’s licence number with two digits the wrong way round, and it went to Defra on 2 October. The law expected that, and it gave you a month to put it right. The month did not start on 2 October. It starts tonight.
What regulation 7 says
Regulation 7 applies where the operator "discovers they have made an error in a digital waste record" and the wrong information has gone into the system. Then, under 7(2), you "must ensure the correct information is entered into the digital waste tracking system in accordance with the specified steps as soon as reasonably practicable and, in any event, within one month of the date on which the operator of a permitted facility becomes aware of the error".
Two things in that sentence matter. The clock starts when you find the mistake, not when you made it. And the month is the outer limit. The duty is to fix it as soon as you reasonably can, and a correction that sits in a drawer for four weeks because there was a month is the second half of the sentence read without the first.
Who finds it decides nothing about the clock
The regulation does not care whether you found the error or someone found it for you. If an inspector points at a weight on a visit, you became aware of it at that moment, and the month started there. The only difference is the conversation. A record you had already corrected, with the date you did it, is a yard checking its own work. The same record still wrong is the thing they came to find.
| What is wrong | When you became aware | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Carrier licence number with two digits swapped | Tonight, reading back the week | Correct it this week. The month runs from tonight |
| 980 kg typed as 9,800 kg | Tonight | Correct it this week. It is in Defra’s totals until you do |
| Weight marked actual when it was a guess | Tonight | Correct the flag. The weight can stay |
| Weight marked as an estimate, and it was one | Not an error | Nothing is owed (our reading). A better figure can still be sent |
| Any of the above, found by an inspector | The day of the visit | The same month, and it started the moment they pointed |
| A load that was never reported | Not a correction | Report it now, with the day it arrived. Regulation 7 does not cover it |
An estimate is not a mistake
Schedule 1 asks for the weight and "whether the weight is estimated or actual". A car booked in on its book weight and marked as an estimate is the record the law asked for. Our reading is that this is not an error, so regulation 7 does not apply to it. A guess marked as actual is a different thing, and the flag is the part to correct.
A late receipt is not a correction
The month is for a record that exists and is wrong. It does nothing for a load that was never reported. That one is late, and the answer is to report it now with the day it actually arrived. We said the same on 6 October, and the two are easy to mix up because both have a deadline in them.
Wales
The Digital Waste Tracking (Wales) Regulations 2026 carry the same duty in their own regulation 7(2): the correct information "as soon as reasonably practicable and, in any event, within one month of the date on which the operator becomes aware of the error". The same month, from the same moment.
What BreakerHQ does
Open the vehicle and tap Correct this receipt. The boxes open holding what Defra has now. Change what is wrong and leave the rest, and nothing you leave is blanked. Change a weight anywhere else on the vehicle and it asks whether Defra’s record should move with it. The correction queues like everything else, so a yard with no signal can still do it tonight, and it goes to Defra as soon as there is a connection. Defra’s answer is kept with it. A tyre or scrap load takes its weighbridge figure the same way.
What it does not do is rewrite the past. The receipt as first sent stays on the record, and each correction sits under it with who made it, when, and what Defra said. Only an owner or an admin can send one, because it changes a legal record. And the form does not change the waste code or the day of arrival. If one of those is wrong, talk to us and we will do it with you.
The licence number was wrong for sixteen days and nobody knew. Tonight somebody does, and that is when the law starts counting.
Sources
- The Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/729), regulation 7: applies where the operator "discovers they have made an error in a digital waste record", and 7(2), the correct information "as soon as reasonably practicable and, in any event, within one month of the date on which the operator of a permitted facility becomes aware of the error". Read 18 October 2026 ↗
- The same regulations, Schedule 1 Part 2 paragraph 14: for each waste code, the total weight "including (i) the unit of measurement used, and (ii) whether the weight is estimated or actual" ↗
- The Digital Waste Tracking (Wales) Regulations 2026 (WSI 2026/105), regulation 7(2): the same duty, "within one month of the date on which the operator becomes aware of the error". Read 18 October 2026 ↗