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That is not an outage: ten excuses the regulations will not take in October

Thursday 1 October, twenty to eight. The first car of the new law comes through the gate on the back of a truck, the lad looks for the tablet, and the tablet is where the tablet always is. By Friday half the trade will be standing at the one door the regulations left open, the one marked outage, explaining to it why they are late. It is worth reading what is written on the door before you knock.

What the door says

Regulation 6(4)(a) of the Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026 defines the word. An outage is "circumstances caused by factors beyond the operator of the permitted facility’s control that prevent the entry of the specified information into the digital waste tracking system by the deadline specified in regulation 4(8)".

Three parts, and it wants all three. Something you could not control. It stopped the entry. It stopped the entry by the end of the second working day after the car arrived. Miss one part and you are not at the outage door, you are at the other one, and the other one is Part 5.

The field guide

We have heard most of these already, and it is not October yet. Each one is held against the definition above, and nothing else.

Ten things that will be blamed in the first week of October, and whether regulation 6 takes them
What happened Outage? Why
The lad’s phone was on two percent No A charger is within your control. So is a second tablet. So is the lad.
The tablet is somewhere in the Transit No It is in the door pocket, under the seat, or in the cab of the other Transit. None of those is beyond your control, although we accept the second Transit is a grey area.
Nobody had registered for the Defra code No GOV.UK has asked you to register your organisation and hand the API code to your software since the page went up. A step you have not taken is not a factor beyond your control.
We did not know it was 1 October No The date has been on GOV.UK all year and it is on the front of this website. Not knowing is not an outage. It is a Thursday.
It was five o’clock on the second day and we had gone home No Defra’s own worked example puts the line at 11:59pm on the second working day. Going home is a choice, and a good one, but the clock does not go home with you.
It was the weekend No And it does not need to be. Saturday and Sunday do not count as working days, nor do bank holidays, Christmas Day or Good Friday. A car in on Friday 2 October is due by the end of Tuesday 6 October.
Our software provider had not finished setting us up Depends You chose them and you chose when. We will leave the Agency to argue whose control that was, and we would not want to be the one arguing it. Put a car through before Thursday and the question never comes up.
The far corner of the yard has no signal Only just Beyond your control, yes. But the deadline is the end of the second working day, and the office by the kettle has signal. A dead corner is an outage for about as long as it takes to walk to the office.
The road was dug up and the yard had no internet for two days Yes Beyond your control, and it stopped the entry by the deadline. This is a real one, and it comes with three steps, below.
Defra’s system was down Yes The one the rule was written for. Defra sends an outage notification when it happens, and if you have received one you are excused the phone call to the Agency. The written record and the seven days still apply.

The excuse comes with homework

Here is the part the trade has not heard. A real outage does not excuse the record. It moves the entry. Regulation 6(2) gives the operator three steps, and they are steps, not suggestions.

First, "unless the operator has received an outage notification, notify the Agency of the outage as soon as reasonably practicable". If Defra’s system went down, Defra tells you, and you are spared the call. If your road got dug up, you make the call.

Second, "make a written record of the specified information within the deadline specified in regulation 4(8)". The same information, the same two working days. The outage does not touch the deadline for the record, only for the entry. A yard that writes nothing down during an outage has not had an outage, it has had a gap.

Third, "within 7 days beginning with the day after the day the outage is resolved, ensure the specified information recorded in a written record under sub-paragraph (b) is entered into the digital waste tracking system". Seven days, counted from the day after it comes back. Not from when you get round to it.

So the outage rule is real, and it will cover a genuine one. But it is not a place to leave a late receipt. You still write the record down on time, and you still enter it within the week.

What BreakerHQ does about it

We built the queue to be the written record that step two asks for. When the lad taps confirm at the gate the receipt is stored on the tablet at that second, with the time, the reg, the weight and the carrier, whether or not there is a bar of signal. The moment the tablet sees the internet again, in the office or in the cab on the way home, the receipt files itself and the deadline guard emails you if Defra says no. We wrote up what the law asks when the system is down in August, and it has not changed. Two things we cannot do for you: register your yard with Defra, and keep the tablet charged and by the gate. Both are worth doing this week.

Put a car through before Thursday. Then on 1 October the first real car is one tap at the gate. The receipt is stored the second you tap it, and it files itself the moment there is signal. No outage, no excuse, nothing to explain.

Set up your yard now

Sources