If you produce waste you have a 'Duty of Care' which is a legal obligation applying to everybody involved in the management of your waste. This includes you as the producer, the carrier and the person who finally disposes of or recycles your waste.

You are obliged to ensure that the person receiving your waste is legally permitted to do so and this is normally done in two stages:

1. Obtain copies of their Waste Transfer Licence and their Waste Management Licence, or review their registration with the Environment Agency. Note that Waste Transfer Licences have a 3-year lifetime.
2. Visit the waste operator's site, view the operations and have a question and answer session. Record this.

Some companies make it very easy to obtain Waste Transfer Licences, and typically have them available from their website. See example. If you struggle, and even some of the very large waste companies are poor at providing the information required under their duty of care, then go to the Environment Agency's public registers. Unfortunately, these are not easy to find and so you need to use this link to find them: Environment Agency's Public Register.

There are two methods of recording your duty of care audit.

• Use a paper form. The SSS Duty of Care form is free to use.
• Use an electronic record, such as a spreadsheet, Word document. The SSS INTACT integrated action management system includes a duty of care record in its audit section.

If you have any queries about Duty of Care, please contact us at info@strategicsafety.co.uk .

Go to home page

 

By Phil Chambers