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Scotland and Northern Ireland, eleven weeks out. Scotland’s first day is a bank holiday. Northern Ireland’s rules are not published yet.

Tuesday 13 October 2026. England and Wales are twelve days into digital waste tracking. Scotland and Northern Ireland start in January, eleven weeks from now, on the same Defra service. Most of what England learned the hard way this month is free to anyone who reads it before Christmas. So here it is, with the two things that are different for you.

Scotland: the date is law, and the first day is a bank holiday

The Digital Waste Tracking (Scotland) Regulations 2026 were made on 11 March and "come into force on 1 January 2027". They are Scotland’s own instrument, made by the Scottish Ministers, enforced by SEPA. The duty is the same shape as England’s. Every load received must be recorded and on the system by "the end of the second working day after the day on which the load of controlled waste is received". A mistake has a month to put right.

The detail is Scottish. A working day is any day that is not "a Saturday or Sunday, Easter Monday, or a bank holiday in Scotland". The duty covers the operator "authorised by permit under" the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018. And the £26 fee is paid "on the first occasion" the duty arises, then on each anniversary, with the power to withhold entry from an operator who has not paid.

Put the date and the holidays together. The first day of the duty is New Year’s Day, and GOV.UK lists Monday 4 January as Scotland’s 2nd January holiday. Neither is a working day. So the first loads anyone in Scotland must report are not due until the end of Wednesday 6 January. The law starts on a day most yards are shut, and gives you until midweek to notice.

One question we expect from older yards. An ATF licensed under the old rules is still covered. SEPA: "In most cases, existing authorisations automatically move under EASR on 1 November 2025". The End-of-Life Vehicles (Storage and Treatment) (Scotland) Regulations 2003 are on SEPA’s list of the eight it replaced. If you are not sure what your licence became, ask SEPA before January, not after.

Northern Ireland: the month is set, the rules are not published

DAERA says Phase 1 "will become mandatory from January 2027" in Northern Ireland. That is the month. The day, the deadline per load and what counts as a working day will be in Northern Ireland’s own regulations, and on 13 October we could not find them on legislation.gov.uk. The GOV.UK plan had "all nations to have laid secondary legislation" by summer 2026. Three of the four are on the shelf.

So we will not tell you your deadline. England, Wales and Scotland all chose two working days, and it would be no surprise if Northern Ireland did too. But no surprise is not a regulation, and you should not plan a gate on our guess. Plan on January, set up as if the rules will look like everyone else’s, and ask DAERA, which GOV.UK names as the department for Northern Ireland.

What England learned this month

The service is open to you now. GOV.UK has had it available "publicly for all permitted and licensed receiving site operators to use" since spring. Nothing stops a Scottish or Northern Irish yard registering this week and reporting real loads before the duty starts. Here is what yards in England found out in October, when it was no longer practice.

1. Register the organisation, with the company’s login. GOV.UK: "You must not use a personal Government Gateway account for this service". Find out now who holds it.
2. Copy the API code from the screen. It appears the moment the organisation is registered. It is five groups of letters and numbers, and a code typed with four groups looks right and bounces every receipt.
3. Book in real cars before January. The first live receipt should not also be your first go. A week of it in December costs nothing and shows you every question the gate will ask.
4. Learn your two working days. In England the first deadline anyone could miss was the end of the first Monday, for the first Thursday’s loads, because the weekend did not count. In Scotland the weekend does not count either, and nor does New Year.

What BreakerHQ does

BreakerHQ reports to the same Defra service, and yards in England have reported through it every day since 1 October. There is nothing to install and no training to book. Sign in on the phone or tablet you already have, put in your permit number and the Defra code, and you are booking in your first car in under fifteen minutes. Every yard that has set up has told us it was easy.

Three honest gaps for a yard north of the border or across the water. The screens quote England’s regulation numbers and name the Environment Agency. We know, and it is on the list. The carrier check reads England’s public register only, and the screen already says so when it cannot find a Scottish or Northern Irish carrier. And the transfer note is built on the England and Wales rules. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own, and we have not yet checked our note against them. One thing that is safe: our due-date line counts weekends but not bank holidays, so for a load received on New Year’s Day it shows Tuesday 5 January when the law says Wednesday. Early, never late.

Sign in and start

England learned its working days on its first Monday night. Scotland can learn them today, eleven weeks early, and still take New Year’s Day off.