What is a hazardous waste consignee return?

A quarterly report on the hazardous waste a business received, treated or disposed of. The business receiving the waste is the consignee. Under regulations 53 and 54 of the Hazardous Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2005 the consignee must send a return every quarter to the Environment Agency and a separate return to each waste producer or holder.

Who must send consignee returns?

Any business that receives hazardous waste, including deliveries of waste from its own business. A vehicle dismantler is a consignee, because an end of life vehicle that has not been depolluted is hazardous waste, code 16 01 04*, and one arriving from a trade source travels on a consignment note. GOV.UK also tells the businesses sending you waste to ask for your returns in writing, to contact the Environment Agency if they do not get them, and to stop using a waste business that does not provide them.

When are consignee returns due?

Quarterly. On the GOV.UK deadlines table, checked 27 August 2026, the July to September 2026 period is due by 31 October 2026 and the October to December 2026 period by 31 January 2027.

How much do consignee returns cost?

The fees are per consignment of waste: £10 for an electronic return or £19 on paper for a single consignment, and £5 electronic or £10 paper where the consignment formed part of a multiple collection. Electronic filing is roughly half the price of paper.

Does digital waste tracking replace consignee returns?

No. Defra is explicit that the paper regime continues alongside the new service: you must continue to submit hazardous waste consignee returns, and charges will still apply. The digital waste tracking receipt and the consignee return are two separate duties on the same load.

Is there a consignee returns spreadsheet?

Yes. The Environment Agency publishes a consignee returns spreadsheet on GOV.UK and that file defines the return: one row per consignment with the note number, date received, postcode of the place of production, EWC code, hazard codes, physical form, quantity in kilograms and the disposal or recovery mode. BreakerHQ builds a quarter sheet in those exact columns from your gate records.

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27 August 2026

Hazardous waste consignee returns: the quarterly duty digital waste tracking does not replace

Most of the attention this year has gone to the new digital receipt. But a yard that takes in hazardous waste has an older quarterly duty that the new service does not touch, and the government page about it contains a sentence your customers may act on. Here is the consignee return: who owes it, when, what it costs, and the quarter sheet BreakerHQ now builds from the records your gate already keeps.

You receive hazardous waste, so you are a consignee

An end of life vehicle that has not been depolluted is hazardous waste, code 16 01 04*, and when one arrives from a garage, a fleet or an insurer it legally travels on a consignment note. The business that receives it is the consignee. GOV.UK puts the duty plainly: you must meet the requirements for consignees if you receive hazardous waste, and that includes deliveries of waste from your own business.

The requirement itself is regulation 53 and 54 of the Hazardous Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2005: a return every quarter, to the Environment Agency and to the waste producer or holder. GOV.UK adds, in its own words: "You must send separate consignee returns to the Environment Agency and the waste producer or holder. You cannot send copies of the same document to both."

The sentence your customers may act on

The same guidance speaks to the businesses that send you vehicles. A producer should get consignee returns every quarter from the consignee dealing with its hazardous waste, should ask for them in writing when they do not arrive, and then: "You should contact the Environment Agency and stop using a waste business if they do not provide consignee returns."

Read that as a yard. The return you owe is not only a compliance box. It is a document your trade suppliers are told to demand, and the guidance names the two consequences of silence: a report to the regulator, and the account moving to a yard that does send returns. Clean quarterly returns are part of what keeps a garage contract.

When, and what it costs

The GOV.UK deadlines table, checked 27 August 2026, gives the current periods: July to September 2026 is due by 31 October 2026, and October to December 2026 by 31 January 2027. The fees are per consignment: £10 for an electronic return or £19 on paper for a single consignment, £5 or £10 where the consignment was part of a multiple collection. Filing electronically is roughly half the price of paper, which is worth knowing for a yard doing this by post.

And to be clear about the thing everyone asks: the digital waste tracking receipt does not make this go away. Defra says so directly: "You must also continue to submit hazardous waste consignee returns (charges will still apply)."

What a return actually contains

The Environment Agency publishes the return as a spreadsheet, and the file defines the record. We read the columns from the file itself on 27 August 2026. One row per consignment:

The consignment row of the EA consignee returns spreadsheet, columns read from the published file on 27 August 2026
Column	For an arriving ELV
Consignment note number	the code on the note that came with the vehicle
Single or multiple consignment	single, for a vehicle on its own note
Date received	the day it came through the gate
Postcode of place of production	where the vehicle came from
EWC code	160104, the six digit form of 16 01 04*
Hazard	HP3, HP5, HP14: flammable, toxic to organs, ecotoxic
Physical form	solid
Quantity in kilograms	the weight you recorded
Mode of disposal or recovery	R13, storage pending recovery

Every one of those answers is something a well run gate already captures, which is the point of what follows.

BreakerHQ now builds the quarter sheet

From today, the Vehicles tab has a Consignee return card. Pick the quarter and the system reads that quarter’s hazardous receipts from the official record and saves a spreadsheet in the exact columns above, with your site details at the top. The hazard codes, physical form and recovery mode match what your Defra receipts already declare, so the return and the digital record can never tell two different stories about the same vehicle.

The gate now asks one new optional question to complete the picture: where the vehicle came from, as a postcode. It is remembered per supplier, so a recovery firm that delivers every week is typed once. Anything missing is counted and named when the sheet saves, never invented. A blank cell stays blank and the summary tells you which rows need attention. If a quarter had no hazardous receipts, the card says so and points at the Null Return option in the EA template instead of saving an empty file.

One honest boundary: the Environment Agency accepts returns on its own form, so BreakerHQ produces the numbers and you copy them in and send it. Nobody on the provider list can file this for you, because the EA does not take filings from software. What software can do is make the quarter a two minute job instead of an afternoon with a folder of consignment notes. The card is included in BreakerHQ at no extra charge.

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