If you hand waste to somebody who is not a registered carrier, that is your problem, not theirs. Duty of care means you have to check, and be able to show you checked.
The Carrier Finder is the Environment Agency's register of registered waste carriers, searchable, so a check takes a few seconds rather than a trip to a government website you have to find again every time. England and Wales are both in it.
How to do it
In the sidebar, under Tools, click Carrier Finder.
Type the business name, the registration number, the company number or a postcode, and press Enter. LoadSnap searches the whole register and asks the live Environment Agency register at the same time, so somebody who registered last week still comes back.
Switch to List if you would rather read a table than a map. The columns are Registration, Business Name, Tier, Postcode and Expires.
Look at the expiry date. A registration that has lapsed is the same as no registration, and expired rows are marked. The status filter has Active, Expiring in 90 days or less, and Expired, if you want one group on its own.
Check the tier. An upper tier registration is the one that covers carrying other people's waste as a business.
Check the address and the registration number line up with the firm you are actually dealing with, not just a similar name. View on EA register opens that registration's own page on the Environment Agency's site.
Worth knowing
Registrations run out. Somebody who was fine in January may not be in December, so check again when you are re-engaging a carrier you have not used for a while. Registrations at or near their expiry date are re-checked against the live register on a rolling sweep, so a renewal shows up here within days rather than months.
Your own registration is on the Compliance dashboard, with a Check live register button, so you can see yourself as the regulator sees you.
Our public Waste Directory carries a listing for registered carriers, and it now shows the enforcement action the Environment Agency has taken against that name. The register gives the date, the name and address, the type of action and the law involved, and nothing else. It publishes no outcome and no penalty, so do not read one into it. The match is on the company's Companies House name, and every entry prints the address the register holds against it, so you can check it against the firm in front of you.
Carriers you use again and again can be saved on your Carriers page, so their details sit with the loads they carried for you.
Related: How the Carrier Finder works in LoadSnap. How to use the Compliance dashboard. How Carrier Companies works in LoadSnap.