I took a car in on Saturday 3 or Sunday 4 October. When is it due on Defra’s system?

By the end of Tuesday 6 October. Regulation 4(8) of the Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026 gives "the end of the second working day after the day on which the load ... is received", and the regulations define a working day as a day that is not "a Saturday or a Sunday", not "Christmas Day", not "Good Friday" and not "a bank holiday in England". Saturday does not count, Sunday does not count, Monday is the first working day and Tuesday is the second. A load received on Friday, Saturday or Sunday is due by the end of Tuesday.

Does the day the car arrives count as one of the two working days?

No. The deadline is the end of the second working day AFTER the day of receipt. A car in on Monday 5 October is due by the end of Wednesday 7 October.

What is the first deadline anyone can actually miss?

The end of Monday 5 October 2026, for loads received on Thursday 1 October, the first day of the duty. Nothing received since 1 October is late before then.

I still have no API code and it is the weekend. What can I do?

Register your organisation at waste-tracking.defra.gov.uk with your company’s Government Gateway account if you have not. GOV.UK says "Once you have registered your organisation, you will be given a unique API code. Give this code to your software provider." The code is shown in your Defra account once approved. We do not know whether approvals are processed at the weekend and we will not guess, but a registration started on Saturday is ahead of one started on Monday. In the meantime write down every load as it arrives: registration, weight, who brought it, when.

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4 October 2026

The weekend does not count. Monday night does, and Tuesday carries three days of cars.

Q: Is the weekend an outage under regulation 6?

No, and it does not need to be. Regulation 6 covers "circumstances caused by factors beyond the operator of the permitted facility’s control that prevent the entry of the specified information". The weekend prevents nothing. It is simply not counted, so the clock on a weekend car does not start until Monday.

It is the weekend of 3 and 4 October 2026, the first one under the new duty, and the gate is open because Saturday is when the private sellers come. Car on a trailer, V5C in the glovebox, a brother-in-law who did the driving. The regulation that started on Thursday has no view on any of this. It does not count Saturday at all.

Saturday and Sunday are not working days

Regulation 4(8) of the Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026 gives you "the end of the second working day after the day on which the load of controlled waste or hazardous controlled waste is received". The same regulation defines a working day as a day which is not "a Saturday or a Sunday", not "Christmas Day", not "Good Friday" and not "a bank holiday in England". That is the whole of it. The day a car arrives does not count, and neither does the weekend.

So a car in today is due on Defra’s system by the end of Tuesday 6 October. A car in yesterday, the same. A car in on Friday, the same. Tuesday night is the first time the two working days are going to feel short, because three days of cars arrive at it together.

The first week, worked from regulation 4(8). No bank holiday falls in these days in England or Wales, the next being Christmas Day.
Load received	On Defra’s system by
Thursday 1 October	End of Monday 5 October
Friday 2 October	End of Tuesday 6 October
Saturday 3 October	End of Tuesday 6 October
Sunday 4 October (today)	End of Tuesday 6 October
Monday 5 October	End of Wednesday 7 October

Monday night is the first deadline anyone can miss

Nothing received since Thursday is late yet. The first loads that can be late are Thursday’s, and they become late at the end of Monday 5 October. If those are already on the system, Monday is an ordinary day. If they are written in a book waiting for an API code, Monday is the day the book has to become a record.

The code comes from your Defra account. GOV.UK: "Once you have registered your organisation, you will be given a unique API code. Give this code to your software provider." The place is waste-tracking.defra.gov.uk, with your company’s Government Gateway. We do not know whether Defra approves registrations at the weekend, and we are not going to guess on your behalf. We do know that a registration started on Saturday is ahead of one started on Monday morning, and that the approval is not instant.

While it is pending, write every load down as it arrives: the registration, the weight, who brought it and when. The regulation describes the waste as received, so what you note at the gate today is the record you will enter, not a rough draft of it.

The weekend is not an outage, and it does not need to be

Regulation 6 defines an outage as "circumstances caused by factors beyond the operator of the permitted facility’s control that prevent the entry of the specified information". A quiet office on a Sunday prevents nothing. You do not need the weekend excused. The regulation already left it out.

Wales, without the promise

The Digital Waste Tracking (Wales) Regulations 2026, regulation 4(9), uses the same sentence: "by the end of the second working day after the day on which the load of controlled waste or hazardous controlled waste is received by the operator". What we could not find in the Welsh instrument is a definition of working day, so we will not promise a Welsh yard its weekend. Put Saturday’s and Sunday’s loads on the system by the end of Monday and you are inside every reading of it. Natural Resources Wales monitors compliance, the registration is with Defra at the same link, and the authorisation number is the EPR number on the NRW permit.

What BreakerHQ does on a Saturday

The same as on a Thursday. The gate books the car in from the reg, the weight and who brought it, with the time it actually arrived, and the receipt waits for the code if the code has not come. No signal on the weighbridge is fine, the record stays on the tablet and goes when signal returns. If Defra rejects a receipt, the deadline guard emails you the car, the reason and the legal due date the moment it happens, so a failure on a Saturday is not found on a Wednesday.

The honest limit is the one from Thursday and Friday. We cannot register you or fetch your code. That is your company’s account and your Government Gateway, and it is the one thing on this page that only you can do.

Book in the weekend’s cars

The brother-in-law will be gone by lunchtime and the car will be in the row by two. The regulation will notice it on Monday, and give you until Tuesday night.