Register with DEFRA for DWTS and get your API Code

If you receive waste at a permitted or licensed site in England or Wales, you need to report every waste movement to DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking Service (DWTS). Since 1 October 2026 this has been a legal requirement under the Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026, and every load must be reported digitally. Waste transfer notes continue to run alongside the service for now, so keep completing them as usual: they do not replace your DWTS report.

Your compliance software 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 its own credentials. This guide walks you through that registration process step by step, so you know exactly what to expect.

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 your software provider. They are what it uses 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 your software provider so it can connect it to your account.

Step 1: Confirm you need to register

The DWTS Receipt of Waste API covers organisations that hold a waste permit or licence and receive waste at a site in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. If that describes your business, registration isn't optional: sites in England and Wales have had to report since 1 October 2026, and sites in Scotland and Northern Ireland follow on 1 January 2027. If you are not registered yet, do it now.

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: Create your Defra account and register your organisation

Registration happens in the service itself, at report-receipt-of-waste.service.gov.uk. The first time you use it, you'll be asked to create a Defra account. You can create or link a Government Gateway or GOV.UK One Login account from inside the service; you must use your organisation's account, never a personal one.

You'll need your organisation's details and its permit or licence information. If you operate more than one organisation that receives waste, each is registered separately on the same account, and the annual charge applies to each one.

How much it costs: £26 per year for each organisation you register. The charge covers all the waste-receiving sites that organisation operates, and the first payment is due by 31 January 2027. If you register later in the year, you still pay the full amount.

As part of registering, you'll be asked to accept DEFRA's API Terms of Service. Take a few minutes to read through them properly.

Step 3: Get your Production API Code

Once your organisation is registered, DEFRA issues it a unique Production API Code. It's sent to you by email, and it 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, because DEFRA uses it to attribute every waste receipt record back to your organisation. If you have more than one organisation on your Defra account, each gets its own API Code.

Step 4: Pass your API Code to your software provider

This is where your part of the process meets your software provider's. Once you have your Production API Code from DEFRA, you enter it into the settings section of your compliance platform. It stores the code securely against your organisation's profile and uses it to authenticate every waste movement record submitted to DWTS on your behalf.

If you use LoadLog, the code goes into the 'Settings' section of your dashboard. 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

DEFRA provides a sandbox environment for testing. It is a complete mirror of the production system, but the records submitted to it are not legal records. Use the sandbox to run through your workflow, train staff, and confirm that your data passes validation before you submit anything live.

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. Details are available on DEFRA's API Codes for Testing and Production page. If you use LoadLog, you can skip this step: your sandbox code is filled in for you, and you only add your production code once DEFRA has issued it.

A common mistake is testing in the sandbox and then forgetting to switch to production. Now that submissions are live, verify your production credentials are active and that your first live submission has gone through.

If something goes wrong during registration

DEFRA's technical helpdesk handles problems with the service itself, and your national regulator handles questions about meeting the requirements. Use the right door and you'll get an answer from someone who can see your registration.

Common problems include permit details not matching Companies House records, the verification email landing in spam, and the API access option not appearing because the organisation verification step has not been completed. Most of these are fixable by checking each step in sequence rather than assuming the system has made an error.

If your permit is still being processed by the Environment Agency, you cannot complete the DWTS registration until the permit is granted. You can prepare everything else, but the permit number is the lynchpin.

What happens after you have your API Code

Enter your API Code into your compliance platform. Switch to sandbox mode. Run five or six test submissions across different waste types and carriers. Check that each submission returns an acceptance confirmation from the DWTS endpoint. Switch to production mode. Submit one live test WTN with a trusted carrier. Verify it appears in your DWTS dashboard.

Then you are ready. The code is active, the connection works, and the data validation passes, so your site is technically compliant.

How long should this take?

DEFRA hasn't published a fixed turnaround time for registration, and processing times vary, so register as early as possible, particularly if your organisation operates multiple receiving sites.

Where to get help

If you run into trouble with the service itself, or have questions about your organisation's eligibility, DEFRA's technical helpdesk is the first stop:

• Technical helpdesk: 03000 203 781, Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm (except public holidays)
• Meeting the requirements: your national regulator, the Environment Agency in England

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.