UK Offence Report

3 A person who fails to comply with a compliance notice imposed under Part 3 of Schedule 2 is guilty of an…

regulation 16(3) of The Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026

This offence was read from the text as made, and no revised version was available, so a later revocation could not be ruled out. Check the current text at legislation.gov.uk.

What the provision says

3 A person who fails to comply with

a compliance notice imposed under Part

3 of Schedule

2 is guilty of an offence.

Text as made, from legislation.gov.uk. © Crown copyright, reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. This is the text as originally made; later amendments are not shown here.

Who it binds, and what has to be proved

Binds
a person
Conduct
failing to comply with a notice or direction
Fault element
Strict liability
Burden of proof
No statutory defence — prosecution proves everything

The prosecution must prove that the conduct happened. This is a strict liability offence as drafted: the provision uses no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence, so there is no need to show that a person meant to do it, knew about it, or was careless.

Intention, knowledge and carelessness are irrelevant to guilt. They may still matter a great deal to sentence.

The provision states no defence, so the prosecution bears the burden on every element of the offence.

Classifier’s reasoning: no word of intention, knowledge, recklessness or negligence in the offence or its provision.

What would breach regulation 16(3)?

These are illustrations, not law. They are generated from the provision’s own words to show the shape of the offence. Whether any particular conduct is caught depends on the full text, on any amendment since, and on the facts.

  1. On these words an offence is committed where a person fails to comply with a compliance notice imposed under Part 3 of Schedule 2.
  2. Being served with a notice under the Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026 and doing nothing by the date it specifies.
  3. Doing part of what the notice requires, where it required all of it.
  4. Disagreeing with the notice and ignoring it, rather than using whatever appeal the instrument provides.

Penalty

Mode of trial
Not determined
Maximum fine
Not determined
Maximum prison (summary)
Not determined

no penalty is stated in this instrument; it may be in the enabling Act, or in a general penalties provision this pass did not connect to the offence.

No penalty was determined from this instrument. It may be in the enabling Act, or in a general penalties provision this pass did not connect to the offence. Absence of a figure here is not evidence that the offence carries no penalty.

Sentencing

Offences of this kind are usually sentenced under the guidelines below. This is a mapping by subject, not a finding about this provision, and the links go to a search of the Sentencing Council’s own site.

Prosecution figures

No published per-offence figure was found for this provision, and it could not be matched to a Ministry of Justice offence code. Offences created by statutory instrument very largely do not have one. Absence of a figure is not evidence that the offence is unused.

Status and lifecycle

Current status
Status not determined
Made
24 June 2026
In force from
1 October 2026
Extent
Not stated

How this was established: read from the text as made; no revised version available, so later revocation could not be ruled out.

What the instrument is for

(This note is not part of the Regulations) — the explanatory note published with the instrument, © Crown copyright.

These Regulations are the first to be made under powers in section 34CA and 34CB of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (c. 43) (“the 1990 Act”). They establish, in England, a digital waste tracking system, the purpose of which is to track controlled waste. Controlled waste is household, industrial or commercial waste (see section 75(4) to (8) of the 1990 Act). Part 2 (regulations 3 to 7) and Schedule 1 contain provisions relating to the establishment of the digital waste tracking system and default requirements for operators of a permitted facility to ensure the entry of information about controlled waste into the digital waste tracking system and to pay an annual fee. This Part also makes provision for outages (when information cannot be entered into the digital waste tracking system) and the correction of errors in the digital waste tracking system. Part 3 (regulations 8 to 12) contain provisions relating to digitally excluded persons, including alternative requirements for recording information that would otherwise be required to be entered into the digital waste tracking system under Part 2. Part 4 (regulations 13 and 14) contains provision about functions of the Environment Agency. Part 5 (regulations 15 to 24) and Schedule 2 contain provisions relating to offences and civil sanctions. Part 6 (regulations 25 to 27) contains provisions about appeals. Part 7 (regulations 28 to 30) contains supplementary provisions including those governing Environment Agency access to information in the digital waste tracking system and persons with whom information held under these Regulations can be shared. A full impact assessment of the effect that this instrument will have on the costs of business, the voluntary sector and the public sector is published alongside these Regulations on www.legislation.gov.uk and available from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Seacole Building, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF.

Read the full note and every offence in this instrument

What Parliament said

Mentions of this instrument in Hansard. Parliamentary material is reused under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.

Other offences in the same instrument

How this was identified as an offence

Everything above rests on the judgement that this provision creates a criminal offence, rather than mentioning one. That judgement is made by rule, from the words of the provision, and this is the rule that made it — with a confidence of 0.92.

Basis
the provision says a person is “guilty of an offence”
Confidence
0.92 of 1.00

A provision that states a penalty for an offence created elsewhere can read very like one that creates an offence, and the rules can mistake the one for the other. If the text quoted above sets a penalty for something made an offence by another provision, treat the classification on this page with that in mind, and read the instrument.

Check the source