How to check your clearance company is actually licensed

If a firm takes waste away from your home in Manchester, the law expects them to be registered with the Environment Agency, and it expects you to have checked. The check is free and takes under a minute.

Most people booking a house clearance or rubbish clearance assume the company handling it is licensed. Plenty are. Some are not, and the way you find out is usually a letter from the council after your sofa turns up on a lane in Salford or Tameside.

The check itself

The Environment Agency keeps a public register of every registered waste carrier. You search the company name or the registration number and confirm the status reads active. That is the whole process. It is free, it is public, and it is the single most useful thing you can do before letting anyone load a van. If you would rather take the load yourself, the Greater Manchester tip permit rules are the other route, and they carry limits of their own.

A firm that is registered will give you the number without hesitating. A firm that changes the subject is telling you something.

Why it lands on you

Under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 you have a duty of care for the waste you produce. That duty does not transfer when the van pulls away. If your waste is fly-tipped (even by someone else, even after you paid them in good faith) you can be prosecuted for it.

The penalties are not nominal. Magistrates could once fine no more than £5,000 for a duty of care failure, but that ceiling was removed in March 2015, so both a magistrates’ court and a crown court can now impose an unlimited fine. Greater Manchester councils have been running enforcement campaigns on exactly this point for years.

Get the paperwork

A licence on its own is not a full record. Ask for documentation covering the load that left your address:

• A waste transfer note, or an invoice that describes the waste removed
• The carrier’s registration number and contact details
• The date of collection and the address it was collected from
• Where the waste was taken

Keep it. If a neighbour’s bags end up dumped nearby and yours are in the same load, that note is the difference between a conversation and a prosecution.

What to ask us

Ask for our registration number and check it. Ask where the load is going. Ask for a transfer note on completion. Any clearance firm working in Manchester, Stockport, Bolton or anywhere else in Greater Manchester should answer all three without pausing.