How to get a DEFRA DWTS API Key

If you receive waste at a permitted or licensed site in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, you will soon need to report every waste movement to DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking Service (DWTS). From October 2026, this becomes a legal requirement under the Environment Act 2021, and paper waste transfer notes will no longer be accepted as valid records.

LoadLog connects to the DWTS Receipt of Waste API on your behalf, but DEFRA requires every receiving organisation to register directly with them first and obtain your own credentials. This guide walks you through that registration process step by step, so you know exactly what to expect and how it fits together with your LoadLog account.

What the DWTS actually requires from you

It helps to understand that there are two separate sets of credentials involved here, because people often mix them up.

• A client ID and secret. These belong to the software provider, LoadLog. They're what we use to authenticate with DEFRA's systems and submit data through the API.
• An API Code. This is yours. It's a unique code that identifies your organisation within the DWTS, and it must be included in every waste movement record submitted on your behalf. Without it, DEFRA has no way of knowing which receiving site the data belongs to.

You don't need to write any code or build anything technical. Your part of the process is registering your organisation with DEFRA, accepting their terms, and then passing your API Code to us so we can connect it to your LoadLog account.

Step 1: Confirm you need to register

The DWTS Receipt of Waste API currently covers organisations that hold a waste permit or licence and receive waste at a site in Great Britain or Northern Ireland. If that describes your business, registration with DWTS isn't optional from October 2026, so it's worth getting it done well ahead of the deadline rather than waiting until the last minute.

You can read DEFRA's own policy paper for the full background on who's affected and the timelines involved, on the GOV.UK Digital Waste Tracking Service page.

Step 2: Register your interest with DEFRA

DEFRA runs registration through an online sign-up form (currently hosted as a Qualtrics survey, which is standard practice for this type of government beta service). You'll need to provide details about your organisation, including your permit or licence information and the site or sites you operate.

Go to the Digital Waste Tracking Service sign-up form to begin.

As part of this form, you'll be asked to read and accept DEFRA's API Terms of Service. Take a few minutes to read through these properly. There's a checkbox at the end of the survey confirming you've done so.

Step 3: Wait for DEFRA to process your registration

Once you've submitted the form, DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking (DWT) team reviews your registration and onboards you as a receiver. This step involves a manual check on their side, so it isn't instant. Plan ahead and don't leave this until the week before you need to go live.

If your software provider, in this case LoadLog, has already completed our own onboarding and testing with DEFRA (which we have), the DWT team can move on to issuing your organisation's credentials once your registration has been approved.

Step 4: Accept your terms and conditions

DEFRA will contact you directly, by email, to confirm your registration and ask you to formally accept the terms and conditions for using the service. This is a separate confirmation from the checkbox on the sign-up form, and it's the point at which DEFRA treats your organisation as fully onboarded.

Step 5: Receive your Production API Code

After you've accepted the terms and conditions, the DWT team issues your organisation a Production API Code. This is sent to you by email and takes the form of a unique code (a UUID, if you're familiar with that term) that identifies your organisation in every record submitted through the API.

Keep this code somewhere secure. Treat it the same way you'd treat any other access credential. It's tied specifically to your organisation, and DEFRA uses it to attribute every waste receipt record back to your site.

Step 6: Pass your API Code to LoadLog

This is where your part of the process meets ours. Once you have your Production API Code from DEFRA, you enter it into the 'Settings' section of your dashboard. We'll store it securely against your organisation's profile and use it to authenticate every waste movement record we submit to DWTS on your behalf.

From that point on, LoadLog handles the rest. When a load is recorded in LoadLog, we package up the required data (waste codes, container details, weights, hazardous or POPs content, and so on) and submit it to DEFRA automatically, with your API Code attached, so the record is correctly attributed to your site.

A note on testing before you go live

If you want to see how the process works before submitting real data, DEFRA's test environment uses a set of ten dummy API codes that any organisation can use during development and testing, rather than your own production code. LoadLog uses these during our own integration testing, so you don't need to request test codes yourself, but it's useful background if you're curious about how the system works behind the scenes. Details are available on DEFRA's API Codes for Testing and Production page.

How long should this take?

DEFRA hasn't published a fixed turnaround time for registration, and as the service is still in public beta, processing times may vary. Our advice is to register as early as possible. Given the October 2026 deadline, we'd recommend starting this process at least a few months ahead of when you need to be live, particularly if your organisation operates multiple receiving sites, each of which may need to go through this process separately.

Where to get help

If you run into trouble with the DEFRA registration form itself, or have questions about your organisation's eligibility, DEFRA's own support contacts are:

• For receivers: [email protected]
• General enquiries: [email protected]

If your question is about how your API Code connects to your LoadLog account, or anything to do with how LoadLog uses your data once it's submitted, get in touch with us directly and we'll talk you through it.