Does digital tracking change duty of care, or only the record?

Duty of care does not change on 1 October 2026. Section 34 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 asks the same things of you this year that it asked last year. Keep the waste safe while it is in your control. Only take it from, or pass it to, someone authorised to handle it. Transfer a written description with it. Complete and sign a transfer note. Keep that note for two years. None of that is rewritten by the digital waste tracking regulations.

What changes is that a second duty sits on top of it. From 1 October 2026, permitted sites in England and Wales that receive waste must enter details of every load into the government's digital service, and the guidance puts the deadline plainly: "You must submit records within 2 working days (excluding weekends and bank holidays), starting on the day after you receive the waste." So the honest answer is that the obligation you already have is unchanged, and a new one has been added beside it. The thing most operators are actually asking about, the record, is what is changing shape.

The duty you already have

Section 34 places a duty of care on anyone who produces, carries, keeps, treats, disposes of or has control of controlled waste. In a yard it comes down to a short list of things you do at the weighbridge. Check the carrier is registered before you tip. Take a written description of what is in the skip. Complete and sign the transfer note with the other party. File it, and be able to find it two years later when someone asks for the 3 March load.

If that behaviour was compliant in September 2026, the same behaviour is compliant in November 2026. No new check has been added to the moment of transfer itself. The offence of breaching duty of care is the same offence, prosecuted under the same section.

The duty the mandate adds

The Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026 create a separate requirement: record specified information about every load you receive and enter it into the digital system. The explanatory memorandum to those regulations is clear that this runs alongside the old duty rather than standing in for it. In the first phase, permitted operators of waste receiving sites "will be required to keep and submit the written descriptions of the waste as well as make a digital record of specified information".

Failing to do that is its own offence. The memorandum confirms the regulations create "new criminal offences and civil sanctions", with the Environment Agency monitoring compliance and keeping a public register of enforcement action. This is not a softer administrative layer bolted onto duty of care. It is a real obligation, and it is a different one.

The paper does not stop

This is the part operators most often get backwards. The assumption is that a digital system replaces the paperwork. For now it does not. The government guidance says: "The current paper-based method of tracking waste will initially continue to run alongside the new digital service. This means you must continue to complete waste transfer notes, Annex VII forms and hazardous waste consignment notes (where required)."

So one load produces two records. The transfer note you have always completed, and the digital receipt you submit. They draw on much the same information: what the waste is, its code, how much of it, who brought it, where it came from. Typing that twice, once in the book and once into a screen two days later, is the practical cost of the first phase, and it is the part worth engineering out of your week.

The genuinely new thing is a clock

Duty of care has never had a reporting deadline in working days. The note is completed at the point of transfer and kept for two years. Nobody asks you to send it anywhere.

The digital receipt has a clock on it. Waste in at 9am on Monday means the receipt is due by the end of Wednesday, with weekends and bank holidays not counting. For a yard running a paper book and a Friday catch-up, that is the real change in working habits. It is not a new standard of care. It is a new tempo, and it is unforgiving of the load that sits on a clipboard in a cab over a bank holiday weekend.

Who carries the risk

Defra's own guidance on picking a supplier is blunt about where responsibility sits: "Buying software is at your own risk. You are responsible for ensuring that the software can meet the necessary regulatory requirements."

That is worth reading twice before you buy anything, including Skiplog. Software can shorten the distance between the weighbridge and the submission. It cannot take the duty off you, and no honest supplier will tell you otherwise. Your records are only as good as what gets typed into them, and the submission format is Defra's to change.

What this means for choosing a tool

If the obligation is unchanged and the record is changing, then the question to ask a supplier is narrow. Does it capture the duty of care fields you already have to capture, and does it carry those straight through into the receipt you now have to submit, without a second round of typing.

Skiplog is on a waitlist and not yet launched. When it launches, it is built to create a digital waste transfer note carrying the EA-mandated fields, waste type, EWC code, quantity, carrier details and destination site, completable in under two minutes on a tablet. It saves to the device first rather than waiting on the network. A note already open when the signal drops shows as queued, then syncing, then synced once the tablet is back in range.

The receipt side is built on the same note. The receipt-of-waste fields are captured when the note is written rather than reconstructed later, the site screen holds the receiver's permit and contact details, and a receipts screen exports rows in Defra's template column order. Rows are checked against Defra's upload rules before they go, so a bad row is named on screen instead of bouncing back from an upload while the two day clock runs. A dashboard card groups loads not yet reported into overdue, due today and due tomorrow, and once a batch is uploaded it can be marked as reported.

Alongside that, Skiplog tracks carrier, broker and dealer registration expiry dates with alerts for anything inside 30 days, and generates the quarterly EA return as a one click CSV in a configurable column layout.

Skiplog is built to help you meet these requirements. It does not guarantee a compliance outcome, because that depends on the accuracy of what your people type and on a format outside any supplier's control.