Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): I welcome officials from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. We are joined this afternoon by Colin Breen, assistant director of environmental resources policy, and Keith Carlisle, head of the waste legislation branch. I also welcome Christopher Eadie from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA). Please brief the Committee.

Mr Keith Carlisle (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): Chairperson and Committee members, thank you for the opportunity to provide you with a briefing on the Digital Waste Tracking Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2026.

DAERA and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, along with the equivalent Scottish, Welsh and UK Departments and their respective regulatory bodies, are committed to tackling waste crime and poorly performing waste sites that damage the environment, blight local communities, undermine legitimate businesses and cost the UK economy an estimated £1 billion a year. Tackling waste crime not only prevents harm to the environment but ensures that resources are properly recycled or recovered, thus assisting our aspiration to have a circular economy. To achieve that, the information gap that hinders the effective regulation and management of waste needed to be addressed by introducing digital waste tracking (DWT), which will be used by all four nations of the UK. Between January and April 2022, DAERA and equivalent Departments in the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments consulted jointly on the introduction of the UK-wide, mandatory digital waste tracking system. A UK Government response to that consultation was published in October 2023.

The aim of DWT is to replace the existing fragmented and outdated systems that are used to report waste movements. It will provide waste regulators with comprehensive and timely data, enabling them to track waste from beginning to end and to identify more easily waste that may be illegally exported, stockpiled, dumped or fly-tipped. The running costs of the DWT system are to be borne by the users and will be managed through an annual service charge that is currently £26 per annum, which is to be administered and collected by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). DEFRA will run and maintain the DWT system on behalf of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the fee is for that purpose.

A phased approach was recommended for the introduction of DWT, and that was agreed, subject to DEFRA being liable for any under-recovery of the service charge. Phase 1 of DWT will be limited to waste industry operators with a permit or licence to receive waste in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland and Scotland are aligned and will bring in phase 1 of DWT on 1 January 2027, while England and Wales began the mandatory operation of phase 1 on 1 October this year. The phased approach aligns with agile delivery principles, starting with the smaller user group, which, in this instance, is just waste receivers. It enables early testing, learning and refinement and reduces delivery risk, thus making efficient use of public funds and building stakeholder confidence through incremental progress.

While the digital recording of waste receipts at receiving sites will provide valuable opportunities to test and refine the system, it provides little benefit to Northern Ireland in meeting the aims of DWT. The initial phase is, however, a necessary foundation before moving on to phase 2, which will incorporate the rest of the actors in the waste management system — producers, carriers, brokers and dealers — to deliver a full, end-to-end digital waste tracking system. Phase 1 of the draft Digital Waste Tracking Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2026 required new offences and penalties to be introduced, so they were considered cross-cutting. DAERA has therefore engaged with officials in the Department of Justice on the proposed offences and penalties that it considered necessary, consistent and proportionate, leading to DOJ approval for the regulations to be made.

The draft regulations were tabled along with an Executive paper in July, and the Executive approved the laying and making of the statutory rule (SR). Owing to their cross-cutting nature, the draft regulations are required to be made by draft affirmative resolution.

If the Committee has any questions, we are happy to answer them, where possible.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you very much. As you said, phase 1 began in England and Wales at the start of this month: are there any early indications of how it has been working? Are you working with other jurisdictions on phase 1?

Mr Carlisle: Yes. We have regular four-nations meetings to find out how phase 1 is going in England and Wales and to develop phase 2. Early indications are that there have been some issues with some of the data, and those issues are being worked through with the software providers. Phase 1 is giving us good information. Rather than having such a large amount of data coming in, had the whole system been introduced in one go, phase 1 has allowed the project team, for want of a better term, to work with the data and deal with issues as they arise.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thank you. How does the Department measure whether DWT is achieving its objective of reducing illegal waste activity such as fly-tipping? What metrics are you using for that?

Mr Carlisle: Initially, it is about getting the companies to submit data and getting that data on board. The regulators have very much agreed that, at this early stage, they want to do a pathway to compliance, as opposed to looking at enforcement. It is probably fair to say, Chris, that the regulators have an idea of what information they should be getting.

Mr Christopher Eadie (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): The operators should already be doing on paper a lot of the stuff that has been brought in under phase 1. All that we are doing is digitising that information. It is just a matter of bringing the operators on to the digital waste tracking system and then bringing them into compliance there. We will not have the full picture of the waste journey until the later phases. On your question about how we measure it, the answer is that it is not until those phases come in that we will see the benefit. We can measure it then.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): In response to the Citizen Space survey, Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council said that it:

Are there any further cost implications for councils? Councils are carrying out other processes: are there any added costs that councils may be required to absorb?

Mr Carlisle: If there is data that they currently are not providing —.

Mr Eadie: Councils are not included in phase 1.

Mr Carlisle: Yes, they are not in phase 1, and that is at their request, in order to allow them time to work through their plans. Initially, England and Northern Ireland were going to include councils, but, following engagement with them through the likes of Arc21 and the government waste working group, the councils expressed concerns about that and wanted more time to develop their plans. We therefore agreed to remove them from phase 1. The councils need to assess whether there will be any further cost implications.

Mr Colin Breen (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs): There may be some initial set-up costs involved to get their IT systems changed, but the aim of digital waste tracking is to digitise all the things that were previously done on paper, so the long-term efficiencies should more than outweigh the initial set-up costs. We are still saying "should" because we are not entirely sure of exactly how phase 2 will run, but the reason is to digitise waste tracking and move away from a lot of manual inputs, paper records and things like that. There are also environmental benefits from digitising waste movement in that there is less risk of waste crime.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): In planning for their budgets and setting of rates, I was just thinking whether the costs are something that councils can measure and thus anticipate.

Mr Breen: We are keeping well engaged with the councils throughout,. As we learn, we will continue to pass that learning on to them. At the minute, the feedback — I have not been getting much — is that people have been able to manage phase 1 so far without there being much cost involved. Some IT providers have presented quite large bills to people, but they have been able to mitigate those through other means and have not had to go with a particular IT provider as yet. Phase 1 is still bedding in, but we will do everything that we can to ensure that there are not unreasonable costs, and, by working towards that end, we will have an improved environment, improved data and improved manual handling of all this stuff from taking a digital-first approach.

Mr Blair: You pre-empted my question there. I am sure that you did not do it deliberately. [Laughter.]

The panel will not be surprised to hear that, given my constituency interest, I will immediately home in on Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council. Given the need for household recycling centres and the clear alternative and better option that they offer to prevent fly-tipping and other problems, how likely is it that the practical issues that that council flagged can be addressed?

Will there be a system that will allow for adjustments in how household recycling centres operate in case they ever have to change their work streams or priorities to meet need?

Mr Carlisle: Like any legislation, the regulations can be amended if there is a significant requirement to do so. That is available as an option.

What was your first question again?

Mr Blair: Can the issues be resolved with councils so that household recycling centres can be included?

Mr Carlisle: I believe so. We will learn a lot, because household waste recycling centres are incorporated in phase 1 in England. That will provide us with valuable insight. As Colin said, digital waste tracking is a standing agenda item for the government waste working group. We are engaging with that group. I gave a presentation to Arc21, and a number of the councils that are not part of Arc21 attended. There is engagement, and we are trying to keep councils up to date. There is also the opportunity for councils to register to participate in the private and public beta phases, which I have encouraged all stakeholders to do, because they will then have a voice at the table and be able to input into how phase 2 will be put together. Those issues can be raised, and we can talk through them at that point.

Mr Blair: Thank you.

Ms Murphy: I have a quick question. When digital waste tracking becomes mandatory, how will a site located along the border region record in the system material that has been received from the South?

Mr Carlisle: Such movement is classed as a trans-frontier shipment of waste and is therefore captured on the European Union's digital waste shipment system (DIWASS), because it is movement between member states.

Ms Murphy: Will both systems align at any stage?

Mr Carlisle: There are proposals for phase 2 of digital waste tracking to have a link to DIWASS. At this stage, however, I have no more information than that, because it is still under development.

Ms Murphy: That is work ongoing in the Department.

Mr Carlisle: The development of the link?

Ms Murphy: Yes. It is part of the four-nations project.

Mr Eadie: There is a lot of waste movement from GB and Northern Ireland throughout Europe. Getting the link working is reasonably high on the agenda, because it needs to work.

Ms Murphy: As you say, it needs to work.

What consultation is being carried out with representative bodies and organisations? I think of shipping and freight companies.

Mr Carlisle: All stakeholders that submit quarterly waste returns have been contacted. The NIEA has provided a stakeholder list, and the information will go out to those organisations. There will be stakeholder engagement with any organisation that provides a quarterly return about its waste movement in Northern Ireland. There will also be public engagement that will be more DEFRA-led, but that will still be done on a four-nations basis.

Ms Murphy: Will DEFRA engage with its counterparts in the Republic on any of that?

Mr Carlisle: I am not sure about that, because the digital waste tracking system is UK-based. I am not sure whether that has happened.

Mr Eadie: I am not involved in this, but DEFRA has spoken to the EU about the digital waste tracking system. I do not know whether there has been any direct correspondence with the Republic of Ireland.

Mr Breen: At official-to-official level, we speak to the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment about the issues all the time. Issues such as the interoperability of the deposit return scheme are items on the agenda of the North/South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council. There is ongoing engagement.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): I recognise the site in Fermanagh that you mean, Áine.

I have one final question about the concern that Arc21 raised. In its Citizen Space survey response, Arc21 said:

Did the Department consider amending the regulations specifically to include Arc21? If not, why not?

Mr Carlisle: Arc21 came to us directly on that, as well as putting it in their response to the Citizen Space survey. We are engaging with Arc21. We have sought legal advice, which is that, depending on the scope and content of Arc21's arrangements with councils, it may be included as a public authority. We cannot know the scope of its arrangements, however, because that is not for us to know, so we went back to Arc 21 and asked it to look into that matter. We are happy to continue our engagement with it to work towards a resolution. At this stage, however, we have not had feedback from Arc21 about its legal advice, so we do not know whether it is to be classed as a public authority.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Thanks, Keith.

Miss McIlveen: On that point, would you consider amending the draft regulations to allow for the inclusion of Arc21, if required?

Mr Carlisle: The regulations are in draft form, so yes. If it is required and there is a legal reason for that information sharing, we can consider doing that.

Miss McIlveen: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): OK. Thank you for coming in and taking us through the draft regulations.

Members, we will now move on. Bearing in mind that the SL1 is the last —.

Ms Finnegan: Chair, may I come in?

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Sorry, Aoife. Please come back, witnesses.

Mr Blair: You will get away yet.

Mr Eadie: We did not get up quickly enough. [Laughter.]

Mr Carlisle: We should have been out.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Sorry, Aoife, you had a question. I did not see your hand up on the screen.

Ms Finnegan: Yes, if you do not mind, Chair. I appreciate the questions that have been asked so far. Áine covered a right bit.

There is so little information about how the regulations will affect businesses along the border. Have you had any engagement with the specific businesses that the digital waste tracking system will affect? My understanding from speaking to a business in my area of Newry and Armagh is that it will have a detrimental effect. That business seems not to be able to have any conversation with anybody who has the required information.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): Aoife, please switch on your camera so that we can see you while you are asking questions. Thank you.

Mr Carlisle: We are open to engaging with any businesses and have encouraged engagement. We do not have enough personnel to contact every business by phone. We have tried to send emails to all businesses that are part of the waste movement chain, and we are open to having such conversations. We have engaged with anybody who has contacted us, as we are doing with Arc21. We are more than happy to engage, and I encouraged every business that I spoke to when I was out doing presentations to register for the private and public beta phases. Doing that will give them a voice at the table so that they can have input. We welcome that.

Ms Finnegan: Thank you. I find the digital waste tracking system difficult to understand, because it is very technical in nature. I do not think that there are a huge number of businesses along the border, so that may be why the conversation has not really happened. If you are willing to meet an affected business, I am happy to facilitate that.

Mr Carlisle: We are happy to engage with stakeholder businesses to hear and talk about their issues. Yes, we are certainly happy to do that.

Mr Breen: Always.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): OK. Thank you for that.

Ms Finnegan: I really appreciate your letting me in, Chair. I will definitely follow up on getting you that invite, Keith.

The Chairperson (Ms D Armstrong): OK. Thank you, Aoife.

With that, thank you, again, for coming in. I think that that is all the questions that we have for you.