Do skip hire firms need a waste carrier registration?
Yes. A skip hire firm moves waste that somebody else produced, which counts as carrying waste as a business, so the firm needs a waste carrier, broker and dealer registration from its environment regulator before a loaded skip leaves a customer's drive.
The short answer, and the word the regulator uses
A skip firm carries waste that belongs to the customer who filled the skip. That is carrying waste as a business, and it has to be registered. In England the register is kept by the Environment Agency, and what you get back is a waste carrier, broker and dealer registration with a CBDU reference on it. Operators call it a licence in the yard, the regulator calls it a registration, and the difference matters mainly when you are searching gov.uk for the form.
Three things get tangled together on this subject, so it helps to separate them early:
- The registration covers the business moving the waste, wherever the lorry goes.
- The environmental permit or registered exemption covers the land the waste is tipped, sorted or stored on.
- The transfer note is the record of one movement, naming the carrier, the waste and where it went.
You can hold all three and still fall down on the third, because the first two are renewals and the third is a job done every load.
Where Skiplog fits on the registration side
Skiplog is being built for UK skip yards and transfer stations with 1 to 20 staff, one site to an account. On this subject it does one job: a registrations screen listing the carrier, broker and dealer registrations your yard depends on, yours and your regular hauliers', with the expiry date against each one and no limit on how many you track.
Anything inside 30 days of lapsing is flagged on that screen and emailed to you, and the dates can also be read from a calendar you subscribe to, so a renewal turns up next to the week's bookings rather than in a drawer.
That is a reminder, not a renewal. Skiplog does not apply on your behalf, does not decide your tier, and a tidy record in Skiplog is not compliance in itself: it is built to help you meet the requirements, not to guarantee the outcome, which still rests on your own dates and your own paperwork.
Questions
Do skip hire companies need a waste carrier licence?
Yes, in all but the unusual cases. The test is whose waste is on the lorry: if it was produced by your customer and you are moving it for payment, you are carrying waste as a business and you must be registered before you do it. For a skip firm that is nearly always the case, including a skip exchange or a muck away run off a builder's site. The registration is held by the business, so a one-van firm and a ten-lorry yard both need one.
Is it a licence or a registration, and what is a CBDU number?
The legal instrument is a waste carrier, broker and dealer registration, so that is the phrase to search for and the phrase an officer will use. A CBDU reference is the registration number issued against it, and it is the number a customer, a transfer station or an inspector will ask you to quote. If a haulier sends you a certificate, the CBDU number and the expiry date are the two things on it worth copying down. Those are the two fields Skiplog stores against a registration, for the yard and for the hauliers you use.
Upper tier or lower tier?
A skip firm carrying construction, demolition or other people's waste sits in the upper tier. The lower tier exists for a narrower set of cases, such as businesses moving only their own waste or certain specified organisations, and it does not fit a commercial skip operation. The regulator decides which tier your activity falls in when you apply, so answer the questions about what you actually carry rather than guessing. If you both move waste and arrange for others to move it, the registration can cover carrier, broker and dealer activity together.
Does the registration cover my yard or transfer station too?
No. A carrier registration is about moving waste; the land you tip, sort, store or screen on needs an environmental permit or a registered exemption in its own right. That is a separate application, a separate reference number and in many cases a separate renewal date to watch. Plenty of enforcement attention lands on operators who hold one and have let the other slide, so treat them as two records, not one.
Does a carrier registration need renewing?
Yes. Registrations run for a fixed term and have to be renewed before the expiry date printed on the certificate, and carrying waste on a lapsed registration is an offence, not an administrative slip. Nobody rings the yard to remind you, so the date needs to live somewhere other than a filing cabinet. Skiplog tracks the expiry date, flags anything inside 30 days, emails you, and can put those dates in a calendar you subscribe to, which is the window in which a renewal is still a calm job rather than a scramble.
Do my subcontract hauliers need their own registration?
Yes. Registration follows the business doing the carrying, so a haulier you bring in for a busy week needs their own, in their own name, and you should see the number before the first load. The Environment Agency's public register lets you check a number against the business, which is a two minute job and worth doing on a new carrier rather than taking a photographed certificate at face value. Holding those numbers and expiry dates in one list, with no cap on how many you keep, is the point of Skiplog's registrations screen.
Does the carrier's registration number go on the transfer note?
The carrier's details belong on the record of the movement, and the registration number is the part most often left blank or copied from the last load by habit. A digital transfer note in Skiplog captures the waste description, the EWC code, the quantity, the carrier details and the destination site in one pass on a phone or tablet, so the number is typed once and carried on the record. If a load moves on a different haulier, that field is the one to check before you save. Correct carrier details are also what makes a quarter's records reconcile against the hauliers' own paperwork.
Does digital waste tracking in 2026 replace the carrier registration?
No. The mandate changes how a waste movement is recorded and reported, not who has to be registered to carry waste, so your registration duty continues exactly as it is today. If anything the registration becomes more visible, because the carrier's details sit in the digital record of every movement. The other pages in this section cover what changes in 2026, when it starts, what Skiplog prepares for the Defra upload, and whether the rules read the same in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where the regulator and the register are different bodies.