Fully licenced waste carriers / brokers

Essex House Clearances are fully licenced under UK environmental legislation with an Upper-Tier waste carrier licence (broker and carrier), and a copy of our licence can be shown to all customers when we conduct an assessment visit, or can be found online using the links on this page.

Why does a waste licence matter?

The simple answer is that you probably don’t want the contents of your property dumped in a nearby country lane or field and then get a visit from the local council or Police accusing you of fly-tipping. If you use an unlicenced operator, this can easily happen.

Issued by the UK Environmental Agency, waste carrier licences add traceability and require holders to dispose of waste at registered waste stations (where the licence must be shown and the transfer recorded). If anyone collects any type of waste from you, they require an upper-tier waste licence by law, which costs only £150 for 3 years.

A (free) lower-tier licence is also available, but these are for businesses which dispose of their own waste – NOT yours unless it is 100% green garden waste (grass etc), animal by-products, construction or demolition waste, or unless they are a registered charity or voluntary organisation.

The relevance of correct licencing is that if a firm is willing to break the law in order to save £150 for a licence, the chances are they’ll also try to save money on waste disposal (typically £190-200 per ton, which roughly equates to a full 3.5 ton van load). If you don’t want to be driving along a quiet country lane and find the contents of your property dumped at the side of the road (can you prove it wasn’t you who dumped it there?) you should only deal with properly licenced companies. If you don’t, your £50 waste removal costs could turn into a very expensive conviction for fly-tipping!

You can find out if a company has a waste carrier licence by checking the gov.uk links below and typing in the business name. Quite simply, if you don’t find a company’s name in the register, they don’t have a licence to clear your property.

Licences for all registered UK clearance companies (not just ours) can be checked here: https://environment.data.gov.uk/public-register/view/search-waste-carriers-brokers or you can go straight to our licence by clicking the Gov.uk link below.

Areas where we operate

Essex House Clearances provide property clearance services across most of Essex and parts of the Suffolk and Herts border area, including Colchester, Braintree, Dunmow, Halstead, Sudbury, Brentwood, Chelmsford and all surrounding towns.

Does your charity need used furniture?

If you run a local registered charity and are happy to accept donations, please get in touch and tell us what you need, what you accept and where. We cannot guarantee to satisfy everybody’s needs but we’ll help where we can. In addition to furniture we can supply clothing, books, games, ornaments, small appliances and other household effects. Get in touch with us if you feel we can help your organisation.

During a property clearance we try to waste as little as possible, preferring instead to donate reusable furniture and other items to deserving local causes and charities with the aim of helping those at the lower end of the housing market. So you don’t need to worry about perfectly good items being thrown away and wasted.