What changed, and when
Scotland has been moving its environmental permitting onto one framework, the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations, for several years. Waste was the last big area to move. On 1 November 2025 every existing waste carrier and broker registration became an EASR registration automatically, with no action needed by the holder.
The second step came on 1 April 2026, when SEPA opened a new digital application service for anyone transporting or arranging the transport of waste. The old waste carrier and broker categories were replaced with three: transporting waste produced by someone else, transporting only your own waste, and acting as a broker or dealer.
The first of those is the one a clearance firm, a skip company or a man with a van needs. SEPA's own list of what it covers reads like our job sheet: commercial waste collections, skip uplifts, house clearances, collecting waste textiles and hauling waste soil.
- 1 November 2025: registrations moved to EASR
- Existing registrations carried over automatically
- 1 April 2026: new SEPA digital application service
- Three categories replace the old carrier/broker split
- New application £304.10, three-year term
- Fine of up to £5,000 for not registering
What it costs a legitimate operator
A new application to transport waste costs £304.10 and the authorisation runs for three years. Adding an activity to an existing registration is £212.87, transferring one is £198.55, and registering to carry only your own waste is free.
Those figures matter to you as a customer because they are the floor under a legitimate price. A registered firm has paid the fee, carries the insurance, and pays gate fees at permitted sites where Scottish Landfill Tax now stands at £130.75 a tonne. A firm quoting a price that could not cover the tipping alone is telling you where the waste is going.
Failing to register carries a fine of up to £5,000. So does handing your waste to someone who is not registered, because the duty of care (your legal responsibility for waste you produce) sits with the producer of the waste as well as the carrier, as your rubbish is still your responsibility sets out.
Check us before you book
WCR/R/3002381 is on SEPA's register. Look it up, then send a photo of the job and we'll price it.
How to check a firm now
SEPA keeps a public register and anyone can search it. Records of registrations made up to 31 March 2026 sit on the older waste carriers and brokers register; registrations made through the new service from 1 April 2026 appear in SEPA's search-the-register service. A firm that registered before April will still be found on the older register until its three-year term rolls over.
Ask for the registration number, search it, and check the name on the record matches the name on the van and the invoice. A number belonging to a different company is not a registration. Our step-by-step is in how to check a waste carrier is registered.
Our own registration is WCR/R/3002381. It carried over to the new system automatically in November 2025, and you are welcome to look it up before booking anything.
Why SEPA is doing this now
The registration reform is one half of a pair. The other half is digital waste tracking, which from 1 January 2027 will have permitted sites logging every load they receive. A cleaner register of who is allowed to carry waste, plus a digital record of where it arrives, is how a regulator finally closes the gap that fly-tipping lives in.
SEPA is tracking around 200 unlicensed waste sites across Scotland and has spent 2026 using its civil penalty powers, as our post on waste crime in Scotland covers. A registration system that is easy to search and hard to fake is the cheap end of the same effort.
For you, the practical upshot is that a registered carrier is now easier to verify than it has ever been, and there is less excuse than ever for using one who is not. Our rubbish removal and man and van rubbish removal services run on the registration described above, with a transfer note on every job.
