How to check a waste carrier is licensed
Ask for the carrier's Environment Agency waste carrier licence number and check it on the EA's public register, which takes under a minute. If your waste is fly-tipped by an unlicensed operator, you as the householder can be fined, so the check is the cheapest insurance in the whole job.
Your duty of care, in plain English
Under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, anyone who produces household waste has a duty of care to hand it only to an authorised person. That duty does not end when the van drives away: if your rubbish is found fly-tipped and traced back to you, by letters, labels or anything else identifying, you can face a fixed penalty of up to £400 or prosecution, regardless of who physically dumped it. Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar and Cleveland and Hartlepool councils all enforce actively, and doorbell-camera prosecutions of rogue carriers regularly make the local news. The householder's defence is simple: you checked, and you can prove it.
The 60-second check
- Ask for the carrier's waste carrier licence number (the format is usually CBDU followed by digits for upper tier) before booking.
- Search the number or the business name on the Environment Agency's public register of waste carriers, brokers and dealers.
- Confirm the registration is upper tier, current, and in the name of the business actually doing your job.
Legitimate carriers put the number on their quotes without being asked. Evasion, vagueness or a cash price that undercuts everyone else is the profile of the operator whose £40 collection becomes your £400 fine.
The paperwork to keep
For anything beyond a casual single-item domestic collection, ask for a waste transfer note: a short document recording what was taken, by whom, and where it is going. For business waste it is a legal requirement that you must keep for two years; for householders it is simply good evidence. Keep it with the quote and the licence check screenshot, and your duty of care is provably discharged.
Other signals worth reading
A written quote naming the price, the waste type and the disposal route. A real address and a traceable business rather than a Facebook page and a phone number. Marked vehicles and uniformed staff help but prove nothing on their own. And a price that makes sense: legal disposal at licensed transfer stations costs real money per tonne, so any quote far below the honest range is saving it somewhere you do not want to know about. Ready to book it properly? The quote form takes two minutes, and the clearance cost guide gives the benchmark figures.