Waste duty of care audit checklist. A printable audit checklist for your own duty of care — registrations current, notes complete, descriptions accurate, sites permitted and records where you can find them.

A duty of care audit asks a different question from a compliance calendar. The calendar asks whether anything has expired; the audit asks whether what you are actually doing matches what the paperwork says — and those come apart quietly, usually at a description that was accurate when the contract started.

Sampling descriptions against containers is the part that cannot be done from a desk and is the part that finds things. A description written three years ago for an office block that now has a workshop in it is the commonest failure in the trade and it is invisible in the filing.

Subcontractors and receiving sites are audited as part of your own duty, not theirs. The duty of care follows the waste, and an audit that checks only your own notes has audited one link in a chain you are responsible for.

Open and overdue findings are counted rather than described. A number is comparable with the last audit, it cannot be written around, and it is the first question anybody senior asks.