On 1 April 2016, the government announced changes to hazardous waste registration and consignment notes came into effect.
Under the previous requirements, a business that produced more than 500kg of hazardous waste had to be registered with the Environment Agency (EA). From 1 April this has been dropped.
If you have a current registration, then you do not need to do anything. When it automatically runs out it will not be renewed. (These changes only apply to premises in England.)
Under the old system, businesses had to put their premises registration number on consignment notes (which are documents that are used to record the waste transfer transaction). However, now the registration process has been dropped. This process is no longer required.
Under the previous regime, businesses that do not have a registration number (those which only produce relatively small amounts of hazardous waste) marked the consignment note with “EXEMPT”. They are no longer able to do this.
From 1 April 2016, all businesses must use the first 6 letters of their business name. This should be followed by 5 numbers of the producer’s choosing. Guidance produced by the EA makes is clear that all businesses must start using this new system from 1 April 2016. Therefore, do not continue to use pre-printed forms that feature your registration number rather than your business name.