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Not signed up to anyone yet. Report the late ones anyway, tonight’s first.

Tuesday 13 October 2026, twelve days into the duty. Somewhere there is a yard with every car since the first of the month written in the book on the desk, and a provider still to pick. If that is you, the short answer to the question you are asking is yes. Report them, all of them, starting tonight. Here is the order to do it in.

Should you still report the late ones

Yes. There is no sentence in the regulations that forgives a late entry, and no sentence that says a late one is not worth making. A receipt that goes in late is a record with an honest date on it. A receipt that never goes in is a gap. Part 5 of the regulations has offences, civil sanctions and a public register of enforcement action. We do not quote the amounts. The gap is what that part is for, and a late record closes it.

It is not an outage either. Regulation 6 defines one as "circumstances caused by factors beyond the operator of the permitted facility’s control". Not having picked a provider yet is not beyond anybody’s control. It is a decision that is twelve days overdue.

Where your loads stand this morning

Regulation 4(8) gives every load until "the end of the second working day after the day on which the load ... is received". The day it arrives does not count, and a Saturday or a Sunday is not a working day.

What to do now, in order

1. Register your organisation with Defra. At Report receipt of waste, with the company’s login, not yours. GOV.UK: "You must not use a personal Government Gateway account for this service". When we checked on 6 October, the API code was on the screen the moment the organisation was registered.
2. Pick how you will send. GOV.UK says "There are 2 ways": software on Defra’s list, using the code, or Defra’s own template spreadsheet, uploaded. "You cannot use your own spreadsheet or make format changes to Defra’s version." You can also use both. If tonight is the only night you have, the spreadsheet is a legal way to get Friday’s cars in.
3. Tonight’s loads first. Friday, Saturday and Sunday’s can still be on time. An hour spent on the late ones does not change whether they were late. An hour spent on tonight’s decides it.
4. Then the late ones, oldest first, with the date they came in. Schedule 1 asks for "The date and time the controlled waste was received at the permitted facility". Take it from what you wrote at the time: the book, the weighbridge ticket, the V5C. The day you type it in is not that date, and a record that says it is would be a second problem on top of the first.
5. From tomorrow, two working days, every load. The backlog is a one-off. The habit is the thing.

What BreakerHQ does

There is nothing to install and no training to book. It runs in the browser on the phone or tablet you already have. Sign in, name the yard, put in the permit number and paste the Defra code, and you are booking in the first car in under fifteen minutes. Every yard that has set up has told us the same thing, that it was easy, and that is the only review we quote.

For the backlog, the gate has a tick that says "It arrived earlier (recording it late)". Tick it, set the day and time the car came in, and the receipt goes to Defra with that date, not today’s. It reaches back 31 days, so every load since 1 October fits until the end of this month. Anything older is a conversation with the regulator, not a tap on a screen. You can book in before the Defra code has come, and the receipts wait for it and send when you paste it in.

Two things it cannot do. It cannot register your organisation with Defra, because that is the company’s own login. And it cannot make a late load count as on time. Nothing can. It can make sure tomorrow’s is not.

Sign in and start

The book on the desk did its job. It wrote down what came in and when. Tonight it gets typed up, and from tomorrow it can go back in the drawer.