Digital Waste Tracking (DWT) is not real time, yet. There is a clear deadline for completing each record, plus rules for amendments, outages and errors. Here is how the timing works.

Records must be completed by the end of the second working day after the waste is received. So a load that arrives at 1pm on Tuesday must be recorded by 23:59 on Thursday.

You amend a record whenever the information changes: a correction, a change of treatment route, or acceptance or rejection of the load. The record is meant to stay accurate as the waste moves on.

During an outage you notify the Environment Agency, make a written record within the normal deadline, and upload it within 7 days of the service coming back.

If you spot a mistake, correct it within one month of becoming aware of it.

After roughly two years, DEFRA expects to move toward mandated real time recording. The two working day window is the starting position, not the long term one, so building a same day habit now is worth doing.

Because a record is created the moment a load is captured at the gate, you are recording in real time by default, well inside the two day rule. If something needs to change afterwards, the record can be amended and the update is filed to DEFRA against the same tracking reference, so your audit trail stays clean.