The CBDU number: who can legally deliver a car to your yard
A recovery truck backs in with a Fiesta on it. Before the car comes off, one question decides whether the delivery is legal: is the person carrying it registered to carry waste? An end of life vehicle is waste from the moment its last keeper discards it, so the trip to your gate is a waste movement, and the rules about who may drive it are not yours, they are the carrier's. Here is the whole picture in gate terms, and what goes on the record either way.
The CBDU number
Anyone carrying other people's waste as part of a business must hold an upper tier carrier registration with the Environment Agency. The registration number looks like CBDU123456, it renews every three years, and it belongs to the business, not the driver. A recovery firm delivering ELVs is squarely inside this rule. So is your own collection truck: fetching cars from customers is carrying waste as part of your business, under your own number.
Checking one takes a minute
The Environment Agency's register of carriers, brokers and dealers is public and free. Type the number or the business name and it says whether the registration is live. A yard that checks new faces at the gate is doing exactly what the duty of care asks: taking reasonable steps to ensure the person handling the waste is authorised.
The four lawful reasons for no number
Not every delivery has a CBDU number, and Defra's own service accepts exactly four reasons why. These are the same four the BreakerHQ gate offers, because they come from Defra's data model, not ours.
Household drop off. A member of the public bringing in their own vehicle. Nobody needs a licence to carry their own household waste.
One off. A genuine one off by somebody who does not normally carry waste, like a friend towing the car in as a favour. The word genuine is doing work there: a man with a trailer who brings you a car every week is a business, whatever he calls it.
On site. The vehicle was already on your premises, so it never travelled on the road as waste.
Marine. Landed from a boat or ship. Rare at a yard, but the law covers it.
What the record needs from 1 October
The digital waste receipt takes either the carrier's registration number or one of those four reasons. One of them must be on the record, and the carrier's name alone is not enough. This is why the BreakerHQ gate asks for the number or the reason at book in, and why a receipt without either one is held back rather than sent to bounce.
The gate habit worth building now
Ask new carriers for their CBDU number the first time and check it on the register. After that, BreakerHQ remembers each supplier's carrier details and fills them in on the next delivery, so the legal question gets asked once, not every visit.