Do I still need to keep paper waste transfer notes?
Short answer: you still need a transfer note record for every load, and the notes already sitting in your office still have to be kept for their full retention period. What digital waste tracking changes is where that record is made and how long it takes to make, not whether you need one.
The paper is not the requirement, the record is
Most operators asking this question have a drawer of duplicate books, a shelf of lever arch files and a suspicion that all of it is about to become pointless. It is worth separating two things that get mixed together.
The first is the duty of care record itself: for each load, what the waste was, its List of Waste (EWC) code, how much of it there was, who carried it, and where it went. That obligation does not go away when the mandate lands. The second is the medium, the carbonless pad in the cab. That is a habit and a convenience, not the legal requirement, and it is the part that changes.
So the practical answer for a yard with one to twenty staff is: keep the paper you already have until its retention period is up, stop creating new paper when you have a digital record you trust, and check your own environmental permit before you change anything, because permit conditions sometimes say more about record keeping than the general guidance does.
Questions
Do I still need to keep paper waste transfer notes?
You need the transfer note record for every load that leaves or arrives at the site, and you need to keep the notes you have already written until their retention period runs out. What is asked of you is the information and the ability to produce it when an officer asks for it, not a specific carbonless duplicate book. Paper is one way of holding that record, and for years it was the obvious way. If a duplicate book is the only copy of a load from last spring, it stays in the office.
Can a digital record replace a signed paper copy?
A transfer note is a description of a waste movement that both parties agree on, so the test is whether your digital record carries the same fields and can be produced on request. Read your environmental permit wording before you retire the books, since permit conditions are site specific and can be stricter than the general duty of care guidance. Also think about the other party: a carrier or a customer who wants their own copy is entitled to ask for one, and that is worth settling before the first tip run rather than at the gate.
How long do I have to keep waste transfer notes?
The retention period is set out in the duty of care code of practice on gov.uk, and hazardous waste consignment notes are held for longer than ordinary transfer notes. Check the current wording there rather than trusting a software supplier's summary, including ours. Two practical points: the clock runs from the date of transfer, so moving to digital next month does not shorten the period on last year's paper, and your permit or your insurer may want records held longer than the minimum.
Does the digital waste tracking mandate mean paper stops being allowed?
The direction of travel is that waste movements get recorded in a digital service rather than on a pad, which is why the mandate exists at all. The commencement date has been a moving target in the past, so check gov.uk for the date that applies to your site and your waste streams rather than working from memory or from a supplier's landing page. Until that date applies to you, your existing arrangement is what you are being judged on. After it applies, your old paper records are still records and still have to be retrievable.
I use a season ticket for repeat collections, does that still work?
A season ticket is the same transfer note information covering repeated collections of the same waste, from the same place, by the same carrier, for up to a year. Going digital does not remove that idea, it just means the underlying record lives somewhere other than a single sheet in a folder. The thing to watch is that a season ticket only holds while the waste and the parties genuinely stay the same, and a yard taking mixed loads often finds that in practice they do not.
Should I run paper and digital side by side during the changeover?
A short overlap is a reasonable way to build confidence, and most operators do it for a few weeks rather than a few months. The risk with a long overlap is that the two records disagree, and a disagreement between your pad and your system is worse in an inspection than either one on its own. Pick a date, log every load digitally from that date, and keep the pad in the cab as a fallback for the days the tablet is flat. There is a separate page on swapping the duplicate book for a digital transfer note record if you want the mechanics of that switch.
What does Skiplog do about the transfer note itself?
Skiplog is built to create a digital waste transfer note with the Environment Agency mandated fields, waste type, EWC code, quantity, carrier details and destination site, in under two minutes on a phone or a tablet in the yard. Notes save to the device first with a visible queued, syncing or synced status and sync when signal comes back, because a transfer station is not a place with reliable coverage. The quarterly return is a one click CSV export in an EA specified column layout, so the figures come from the notes you logged rather than from retyping. It is designed to help you meet the requirements, and the accuracy of what gets typed at the weighbridge is still yours.
Do I have to hire someone to run this?
That is the premise Skiplog is built against. A yard with one to twenty staff does not have a compliance clerk, so the record has to be made by the person standing next to the skip, on the device already in their hand, in the time it takes the lorry to settle on the weighbridge. If a digital record takes longer than writing the note by hand, the yard will quietly go back to writing the note by hand.