Accredited official statistics

Local authority collected waste management in England: Methodological summary, 2024/25

Updated 31 March 2026

Applies to England

1. Introduction

Estimates of local authority collected waste generation and management for England are published annually by Defra. Since 2004/05 data collection has been via an online web-based system called ‘WasteDataFlow’.

WasteDataFlow is a UK system, and it is also used by the other UK countries to produce similar statistics. The questionnaires differ slightly, but the core information collected is comparable. Details of the questionnaires used are included in the core dataset available in the guidance section of the WasteDataFlow website.

2. Accredited official statistics

Accredited official statistics were previously referred to as National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. An explanation can be found on the ‘Office for Statistics Regulation’ (OSR) website.

In 2020, these local authority waste and recycling statistics together with those published by the devolved governments in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland underwent a compliance review by the OSR, who monitor government statistical quality.

National statistics accreditation for the England publications was maintained by the review. The OSR made a number of recommendations around the statistics and publications in a letter to the relevant heads of statistics in each of the four UK countries, and published this letter on their website.

3. Timeliness

The deadline for data submission for each quarter is three months after the end of the quarter. After the validation process is complete (as described in the ‘Data quality’ section), Defra generally receive the data around six months after the end of each quarter, however in recent years a few authorities have been increasingly late with returns, delaying the production of the statistics. Defra conduct further data quality assurance checks on the quarterly and annual data.

Defra publishes the local authority breakdown and the regions, including the financial year data annually as quickly as possible and before the end of the next financial year to which the data relates.

4. Data quality

Generally, the data that is reported into WasteDataFlow comes from information supplied to authorities by their waste management contractor and is used by them in their own internal management information systems and for activities such as contract performance monitoring. It is not possible to know for sure how accurate the reported data is, but authorities have an incentive to maintain accurate data for their internal purposes, contract management and performance reporting.

Reported waste collection tonnages or tonnages of material going into a primary treatment facility will have a higher degree of accuracy than tonnages of material reported at secondary or subsequent facilities. This is because after collection or on arrival at primary facilities the tonnage of waste is measured at a vehicle weighbridge. Once entering a primary treatment facility or transfer station waste may be combined with waste from other local authorities and possibly commercial sources. Subsequent fractions of this waste reported as treated or separate material streams are likely to be calculated based on a proportion of the overall tonnage of waste entering the primary facility. The local authority will also be dependent on the co-operation of waste management facilities and brokers handling the waste further downstream on supplying relevant information. This should be borne in mind when analysing data.

In WasteDataFlow, each local authority has at least one data entry user and an authoriser who has to check and approve the data before it can be submitted to the database. After submission, the data pass through standard validation checks to ensure internal consistency and completeness of data reporting and period on period changes against defined thresholds to identify potential data recording errors. Further targeted checks are carried out by Defra at a quarterly the national level, with input from the Environment Agency, as appropriate.

Stage 1 validation explained in the WasteDataFlow guidance document ‘GN65: Resolving validation checks query by query (pdf)’ covers the internal consistency of the return and comparison with previous returns. There is detailed guidance for local authorities on the WasteDataFlow website covering data entry. There are also a number of tools provided to authorities to help them ensure their returns are correct. There are some in-built data entry restrictions which limit data entry options and some other onscreen checks and a more detailed validation spreadsheet available on WasteDataFlow for users to run to check that the data they have entered balances. This will also highlight other potential issues for the local authority to either address or confirm as correct, with appropriate explanation before the return to submitted for validation by the contractor. There is a comments box accompanying each question where local authorities can enter extra information to help with the validation process. Once the local authority has submitted their quarterly dataset, Defra’s contractors review the validation checks and any comments provided. Any further points may be raised with the local authority and data amended if necessary.

At the national level, Defra performs checks on the consistency of the national results, comparisons with previous estimates and general sense checking of the results to check and understand trends and identify any potential data outliers. Sometimes Defra identify particular data reporting errors which are queried with local authorities, which will then be corrected in liaison with the local authority. Specific enquiries may be referred to the Environment Agency when appropriate, particularly for advice on particular waste streams, treatment facilities or outputs.

The introduction of the new treatment question, ‘Question 100’ (Q100) for all local authorities from April 2015 provided scope for more flexible and complete reporting for the treatment and end destination of waste. This multiple level question structure results in a much more complex data structure, where reporting outputs are still developing. Data validation checks have evolved since its introduction and now include checks for incinerator bottom ash (IBA) and IBA metal from incineration of waste, proportions of rejects from sorting facilities, and autocomplete functions to help reduce data errors.

The main focus of validation and data quality assurance of Q100 data is on tonnages of material, waste treatment, waste stream types and material outputs. Data quality assurance does not extend to checking accuracy down to individual facilities and individual permits; this level of checking would require very substantial additional resource and cross reference to sources outside of WasteDataFlow. It is possible that such issues may come to light through other detailed analysis by Defra or the Environment Agency and so could be addressed at this point. Similarly, if there are other targeted exercises. As this level of checking is not routinely possible, this should be borne in mind when carrying out data analysis on site level data or for individual materials.

5. Revisions policy

The general WasteDataFlow policy is to minimise data revisions and encourage local authorities to accurately report quarterly data by deadlines. Where small revisions are requested, local authorities are advised to make balancing adjustments in subsequent quarters. For more substantive changes, local authorities request their data to be ‘rolled back’ to them after they have submitted. Where this change request is agreed by Defra, a quarterly return will be revised. These requests are relatively few during the year, but more requests are received towards the end of the year.

Generally, no changes are permitted after validation of quarter 4 data has been completed unless these are very significant so are by exception only. Authorities are also required to provide evidence regarding changes in procedures they have put in place to minimise the need for future data revisions.

6. Revisions to historical statistics

There are revisions to the 2023 and 2023/24 aggregate totals for England and the South West region. This is primarily due to receiving final data for Bristol City Council to replace the estimated data originally presented in the 2023/24 statistical release.

Bristol data for 2023/24 now appears in the local authority and regional dataset, and their question-level dataset is available on the ‘local authority collected waste management - annual results’ landing page on GOV.UK or by download direct from WasteDataFlow.

For further detail and scale of revisions see the ‘Data and Methodology’ section of the main statistical notice.

7. Waste from households measure

The ‘waste from households’ recycling measure is a narrower measure than the other ‘household waste’ measure. It is used to construct a harmonised UK indicator for reporting recycling rates at a UK level on a calendar year basis, providing comparable calculations across each of the four UK countries. Table 1 shows the detail of what is included in the ‘waste from households’ and ‘household waste’ recycling measures.

Table 1: Waste streams included in the waste from households and household waste recycling measures

Waste stream	Waste from households	Household waste
Recycling (including composting and reuse):
from households and other premises similar to households, civic amenity sites, bring banks	Y	Y
from street bins	N	Y
from household-related parks and grounds	Community skips only	Y
from soil	N	Y
from rubble and plasterboard	N	N
from compost-like output from mechanical biological treatment plants	N	Y
from incinerator bottom ash	N	N
from metal recovered and recycled from incinerator bottom ash	Y [note 1]	N
other, from residual streams	Y	Y
recycling rejects	N	N
Residual waste:
from regular household collection	Y	Y
from civic amenity sites	Y	Y
from bulky waste	Y	Y
from other household waste	Y	Y
from street cleaning and sweeping	N	Y
from gully emptying	N	Y
from separately collected healthcare waste	N	Y
from asbestos waste	N	Y

Notes on Table 1:

1. Revised in 2017 to include IBA metal and applied to data from April 2015 onwards.

8. Question 100 (Q100)

A new ‘Question 100’ (Q100) to replace the various existing treatment questions, was introduced on a voluntary basis from April 2014 and up to around 100 local authorities in England used this new question to report their waste management practices over the quarters in 2014/15. These 100 local authorities represented about 29% of all total local authority waste. Q100 reporting became mandatory in April 2015 for all local authorities in England.

Q100 provides a more flexible structure that has enabled local authorities to report a more complete and transparent representation of the more complex waste treatment practices that occur which could not be accurately captured under the old question structure. It also provides the opportunity for local authorities to report in more detail the further treatment and disposal of certain waste types such as refuse derived fuel, which would have been a final output previously. This is highly specific to the local authority and to the facilities and the practices used for treatment and disposal.

Q100 also allows for more accurate and transparent reporting of recycling recovered from the residual stream which is back-allocated by the waste disposal authority to its constituent waste collection authorities, where there is arrangement to do this. This is done in a slightly different way with some subtle changes to the calculation and apportionment. It also provides material specific information to be recorded which results in lower figures against ‘other materials’ for recycling as this is now recorded against specific materials such as glass, plastic and paper.

There are some subtle differences in the way the recycling calculations work in relation to the apportionment of waste as household or non-household or as waste from household or non-waste from household depending on whether the local authority has provided the specific split at treatment. In the absence of this, the default factor based on the split at collection is applied. In many cases, local authorities have provided specific splits for household waste but not the waste from household splits. This may have a small impact on the apportionment and the household waste and waste from household recycling rates.

The introduction of Q100, provided scope for local authorities to report more fully on treatment and end destination. This is particularly the case for incineration of waste and subsequent outputs and their final treatment and disposal. Gathering such information can be challenging, especially where waste is goes through multiple different sorting and treatment processes at different facilities. In most cases, local authorities can supply this information but, in some cases, full end destination treatment is not given or is stated as ‘unknown’. This may have a small impact on the final figures. Defra will continue to monitor this and working with local authorities to enhance data quality assurance and consistency and completeness of reporting.

9. Inclusion of IBA Metal in the waste from households recycling measure

A methodological change was introduced for the 2016 waste from households dataset (Published December 2017) to include metal recovered and recycled after incineration in the recycling tonnage. Inclusion of IBA metal was facilitated through the new Q100 reporting structure for waste treatment which all local authorities have been using since April 2015. The IBA metal which is now counted and reported as recycling would previously have been reported as ‘recovery’ in the waste from households dataset. This methodological change for IBA metal has been applied to the waste from households measures only.

Overall, this change in methodology resulted in ‘waste from households’ recycling rates being around 1 percentage point higher in recent years than where IBA metal would previously have been reported as ‘recovery’ The National waste from households recycling rate is shown with and without IBA metals in Table 1 of the statistical release.

There are no such methodological changes to the dataset for all local authority waste or ‘household waste’ recycling. There are also no changes to the household (NI 192) recycling figures that are reported for England, nor at a regional and individual local authority level where existing methodology and definitions have been retained.

10. 2024/25 statistics

The final cuts of data for quarters 1, 2, 3 and 4 of 2024/25 were downloaded from the WasteDataFlow database in February 2026.

All 321 reporting authorities in England provided full returns.

11. Seasonality and year-end effects

Waste production and waste management vary over the course of a year, with the level of garden waste collected in spring and summer having a marked effect on recycling rates from quarter to quarter, and year to year. This means that the trends observed in quarterly data (or a rolling year) will not necessarily marry up with those seen in calendar year figures. This in turn means care needs to be taken in interpreting the long-term trends of an annual dataset with that of any quarterly data or between calendar year and financial year datasets.

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted waste arisings and collected tonnages in 2020/21 and to a lesser extent in 2021/22.

12. Dealing with unvalidated returns

There are two main choices for dealing with returns that have not completed validation. Either to use the validated return made for the same period of the previous year, or to use the unvalidated returns directly.

There were no unvalidated returns within the 2024/25 dataset.

13. Access to data

WasteDataFlow data becomes public once the statistics release has been published. Users can access the results in two ways:

1. From the local authority collected waste management landing page on GOV.UK, which contains the statistics releases and summary analyses.

2. WasteDataFlow contains a reporting feature which allows custom reports to be produced. Access is available to anyone. An email address is required to register for WasteDataFlow (no other personal information is collected).

14. Feedback

We are always interested in feedback from users on any aspect of this release or on waste statistics in general. We would particularly like to hear about what users do with the results and data available in WasteDataFlow.

Comments may be sent to:

Waste and Recycling Statistics
Defra
Mallard House
Peasholme Green
York
YO1 7PX

Email: WasteStatistics@defra.gov.uk

Alternatively, you can use this short local authority waste and recycling statistics feedback questionnaire in Google Forms to leave comments on the publication and data.