Environmental Permitting (Waste Controlling or Transporting) and Relevant Functions of Primary Authorities (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2026
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock
That the Grand Committee do consider the Environmental Permitting (Waste Controlling or Transporting) and Relevant Functions of Primary Authorities (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2026.
Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, these regulations were laid before the House on 20 May 2026. I would like to acknowledge the work of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its review of this statutory instrument. The committee’s scrutiny is a vital part of our legislative process, ensuring that the policy intentions behind secondary legislation are clear and well-founded.
Waste crime blights our communities—across our streets, fields and woodlands, criminals dump waste illegally. This an eyesore and causes damage to our environment. A light-touch registration system for those who transport and deal in waste has been exploited over the years by waste cowboys who dump waste and leave a huge clean-up bill. This system is not fit for purpose. Today we seek to reform it, introducing stricter checks and requirements, closing the loopholes that allow illegal operators into our waste system.
We will bring those in England who control and transport waste within the scope of the 2016 environmental permitting regulations, while repealing the current carriers, brokers and dealers’ registration system. These regulations will introduce permits for those who control and transport waste, bringing the system in line with site-based waste activities. Permitting will mean that those who apply will need to undergo a stricter range of background checks, including criminal record checks, as well as demonstrating that they are technically competent to do the job.
The new system of permitting will be managed the Environment Agency, which will be responsible for managing applications and ensuring compliance. The Environment Agency will be able to suspend and ultimately revoke permits where conditions are breached. It will be able to prosecute, leading to fines or up to five years’ imprisonment. The fees introduced for permits will mean that the Environment Agency will be effectively resourced for compliance work.
These regulations will make it easier for the public to trust the people they hand their waste to. Alongside permits being able to be checked online, we are requiring that waste controllers and transporters include their permit number on advertising. Whether this is a Facebook ad or a branded van, the public will be able to spot and check on the operators they work with.
This reform is one of a number outlined in the Government’s Waste Crime Action Plan, published in March, which together strengthen the regulatory framework and the Environment Agency’s ability to prevent, detect and act against waste crime. We have taken further legislative action by replacing outdated paper-based methods for monitoring waste movements with digital waste tracking. We will also be tightening the waste permit exemptions system by removing three exemptions and tightening the conditions of seven others that have long been abused by waste criminals.
Alongside the reforms, it is important that we provide those responsible for tackling waste crime with the tools needed to effectively stamp it out. We have committed an additional £45 million for the Environment Agency to spend on waste crime enforcement over the next three financial years to support this. This funding will mean that there are more boots on the ground to expand its enforcement activity and ensure waste criminals face the consequences.
I want to acknowledge the strength of support from the industry and its patience over the years as it has been developed. These regulations represent a significant change for the waste system and will help level the playing field for operators, as well as protecting our communities and the environment from waste criminals.
Alongside the reforms to the carriers, brokers and dealers’ system, the regulations also bring the Environment Act 2021 into the scope of primary authority by adding it to Schedule 3 to the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanction Act. Primary authority is a means for businesses to receive assured and tailored advice on meeting regulations such as environmental health, trading standards and fire safety through a single point of contact. This amendment is particularly necessary to enable primary authorities to play a role in effectively supporting retailers in undertaking their obligations as required in the deposit return scheme. I beg to move.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I briefly want to congratulate the Government and to say, well done. I think this was first put forward eight years ago, and it is finally happening. I appreciate it is not happening until next year, but we need to recognise the long amount of time it took to get here. I hope the results will be very rapid.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in the discussion and all noble Lords for their strong support for the measures being brought forward. As noble Lords have said, this has been a long time coming, so it is really good to see that we have finally got this in front of us today. One thing that has come across really clearly, not just today but in a number of questions and parliamentary debates, is the huge problem of criminal waste activity that now blights so much of our countryside. There were a number of questions asked. I will do my best to cover them off, and if there is anything else I have missed, I will make sure I get back to noble Lords in writing.
First, on evaluation and monitoring, we recognise that tackling waste crime requires sustained effort and a willingness to adapt as circumstances evolve. Delivery of the waste crime action plan will be accompanied by a process of continuous review and improvement. We will also regularly assess the effectiveness of the measures that are introduced. We will consider any new evidence as it emerges and, importantly, identify opportunities to go further where existing interventions are not achieving the desired outcomes. This is designed to ensure that our approach to tackling waste crime remains agile, responsive and focused on achieving lasting change.
The Environment Agency is also developing improved indicators for 2026-27, including measures on larger-scale offending, response times and deterrence. The current Environment Agency scorecard metric covers only a narrow proportion of illegal waste activity. Waste crime is hard to measure as it is deliberately hidden: only around 27% of incidents are actually reported. Defra is working closely with EA to deliver new indicators, improving visibility of the problem and getting a better grip on it.
Defra is leading the delivery of the waste crime action plan, working closely with the Environment Agency as the national lead for waste crime. That is being done alongside HMRC, the Home Office, police forces and local authorities, because if we are going to successfully tackle this, we need co-ordinated cross-government action. As I mentioned in my speech, we have committed an extra £45 million over three years, and an extra £5.6 million uplift in 2025-26, designed to increase front-line enforcement, intelligence and operational capacity, so we have more officers, specialised units and multi-agency activity.
We are also bringing in structural reforms, including CBD reform, digital waste tracking and exemption reforms. They are being implemented to design crime out of the system so that prevention and compliance are integral, rather than relying on reactive enforcement alone. We are also driving through other concrete operations measures: earlier interventions, permit action, restriction notices, prosecutions, use of advanced technology including drones and satellite imagery, and strengthened intelligence via the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, which I will come on to shortly. On monitoring effectiveness, we will deliver improved metrics but also review the multi-agency waste crime response and adapt its delivery so that the action plan remains live and responsive.
The noble Earl asked about digital waste tracking. It will work by requiring information to be submitted to a central system of all movements of hazardous and non-hazardous waste, with a few pragmatic exemptions, from the point the waste is produced to the point it arrives at the waste receiving facility. It will replace paper processes with consistent, near real-time data, improving traceability and highlighting any unusual movements linked to misdescription, diversion or illegal export. That is one of the ways in which we will tackle the illegal export issue that the noble Earl asked about. The first phase started in April, and it will be mandatory from October. The second phase will cover the whole waste movement chain. It is planned that that will be available for all relevant operators to use voluntarily from spring next year, with a mandatory rollout from the following October.
The noble Earl raised the exemptions. We need to reform the waste exemption regime because we need to stop criminals having the opportunities they currently have to hide illegal activity behind permit exemptions. That is why we are removing the three most abused exemptions and tightening up conditions on the others. Exemptions allow low-risk waste activities to operate without a permit, but we know that some have been widely abused by criminals. We will also bring in limits on quantities, tougher operating conditions and stronger record-keeping. We need to remove the weak points and protect the permitting regime. We are currently working on what the necessary legislative amendments would look like for that. Again, when doing that, we will take into account some of the issues that the noble Earl raised, as we do not want to cause problems for people who are legitimately doing their work.
The noble Earl also asked about businesses and people working in the system. Clearly, when designing regulations such as this, we have to work with those who will use them, to ensure that they work in the most effective way and we do not end up realising that they are not practical when we start monitoring. It is all about how things will practically make a difference.
On the Explanatory Memorandum, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about the Environment Agency and efficiency savings. The new controllers and transporters system will mean that operators are required to submit more detailed information as part of their permit applications. This information will be used by the Environment Agency to more efficiently identify high-risk operators and conduct monitoring and compliance work.
The noble Lord referred to the £1 billion cost of cross-county organised crime. The way that we will try to work with the National Crime Agency, which is the point the noble Lord was speaking to, is that the Joint Unit for Waste Crime will provide the crucial collective operational capability. To ensure that the wider system for tackling waste crime remains effective in the face of an evolving threat, Defra is working closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Home Office to undertake a review of the end-to-end multi-agency response to waste crime. That will cover areas such as information sharing, local-to-national co-ordination and prosecution capabilities. The review will also identify opportunities to strengthen how agencies work together and ensure that the overall system remains effective, resilient and equipped to meet future challenges. The existing capabilities, including the JUWC, will continue to play a key role within this strengthened framework.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
I take that to mean that, although the National Crime Agency will not be put into the lead, it will have an enhanced role. Is that what the Minister said?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Defra and the Environment Agency will be the lead, but we will work absolutely hand in glove with those other agencies to make sure that they effectively tackle the problem we have. As I say, we will monitor anyway so, if we find that it needs changing in any way to strengthen that, we will be able to do that once we have continued to review and monitor. We are bringing all these changes in because we want to make a difference and we want to stop what has been happening.
I have mentioned to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, that I would be very happy to meet her to discuss her Private Member’s Bill, and I hope we can do that in the not-too-distant future.
I appreciate the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, coming in to offer her support for this SI. As she said, this has taken a long time, and I am sure she did quite a bit of work on it, so it is important to see that work started by one Government has been completed by another. With that, I commend the regulations to the Committee.