Digital waste tracking software for scrap yards: what changes on 1 October
If you run a permitted scrap yard, the search that probably brought you here is the right question at the right time. From 1 October 2026 every load of waste your site receives must be reported digitally to Defra, by the end of the second working day after it lands. GOV.UK puts the scope plainly: all organisations that are licensed or permitted to receive waste must use the new report receipt of waste service. A permitted metal recycling site is squarely inside that sentence.
Your SMDA book is not your waste tracking
Scrap yards already keep records the law demands: seller ID checks, non cash payment, the metal bought, under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013. None of that satisfies the new duty. Digital waste tracking is a different law about a different record, the waste receipt itself, filed with Defra per load. From October a yard needs both, and the new one cannot be kept on paper.
Why the record matters more than it used to
The Environment Agency publishes information about permits so anyone can see it. Its own guidance lists what is public: environmental permits for waste operations, compliance assessments, and an enforcement action register with the formal cautions and prosecutions it has taken against companies. Your compliance history is not a private conversation between you and an inspector. It is a public record your customers, your insurers and your competitors can read. The August 2026 waste crime crackdown put more officers behind it. Clean digital records are the cheapest reputation insurance a yard can buy.
How to choose digital waste tracking software for a scrap yard
Start where Defra starts: the GOV.UK list of confirmed software providers. Only listed software has been confirmed to meet the digital waste tracking requirements, so anything not on it cannot file your receipts today. The list held 63 names when we checked it on 22 August 2026, and we published a comparison of every one of them.
Then ask four questions of any system, including ours. Does it work at the speed of your gate, so recording a load does not queue the weighbridge? Does it keep working when the signal drops, because yards are built of metal and dead spots? Does it check the carrier against the EA register while the truck is still on site, since using a registered carrier is your duty of care? And does it cover everything your site actually takes in?
That last question is where scrap yards split. Systems from the scrap world appear on the confirmed list, FRED from Increase Computers and Yard Base from BrandBuilt were both on it when we checked on 22 August 2026, and they speak weighbridge and metal. What none of the scrap systems markets is the end of life vehicle workflow: the Certificate of Destruction record and DVLA notification, depollution with the change from hazardous to non hazardous on the record, and the hazardous coding an undepolluted car must carry in the receipt. If vehicles never cross your weighbridge, you may not need any of that. If they do, it is the difference between reporting scrap and running a legal ATF.
Where BreakerHQ fits
BreakerHQ is on the GOV.UK confirmed list, as 1Z Digital Ltd, and it is built for the yard that takes vehicles in: reg in at the gate, the record fills itself from DVLA, one tap files the receipt, the carrier is checked against the EA register during book in, and it all works with no signal. CoD, depollution, the site register and the evidence pack live on the same vehicle record. It is £39 a month, every user included, free until the law starts. If your yard is metal only, read the full comparison and pick with your eyes open. If your yard breaks cars, this is the one built for you.