Scrap metal sits at an odd junction of the transport world: it is freight, it is waste-adjacent, and it has its own licensing regime run not by the traffic commissioner but by the local council. Anyone buying, selling or collecting scrap metal as a business needs a scrap metal dealer’s licence from the council where they operate - and the regime comes in two distinct flavours with different rules attached.
The GOV.UK registration guidance draws the line. A site licence covers a dealer operating from fixed premises - the classic scrapyard - and covers all sites in that council’s area identified in the licence. A mobile collector’s licence covers the other model: a dealer who collects scrap door to door, from site clearances, or from businesses, without fixed dealing premises. The distinction matters because the licences are not interchangeable: a collector cannot operate a yard on a collector’s licence, and a site operator sending out collection rounds needs the licence that covers the actual business.
Both are issued by the local council, and a dealer working across council areas needs to think about which licences cover which territory - the collector’s licence is issued per council area, so multi-area collection rounds can mean multiple licences. Applicants face a suitability assessment - the regime was built to squeeze metal theft out of the supply chain, so councils check whether applicants are suitable persons to hold the licence.
Licences come with visibility duties. The registration guidance sets out display requirements: site licence holders must display the licence at the site; collectors carry their licence documentation on their rounds. The point is the same one that runs through the whole regime - traceability. Anyone selling scrap to a dealer should be able to see they are dealing with a licensed business, and enforcement officers should be able to establish it at a glance.
The conduct rules reach further into how business is done, with restrictions designed to kill the anonymous-cash-metal pipeline - most famously the prohibition on cash payments for scrap metal, which pushed the trade onto recorded, traceable payment. For anyone running a scrap-adjacent business - a yard that occasionally buys metal, a demolition or clearance operation - the licensing question is not whether the rules are burdensome but whether the activity needs the licence at all, and ‘occasionally’ is not an exemption.
The regime’s spine is its records duty. Dealers must record details of the scrap they receive: the guidance specifies keeping records of the type and form of the metal, its weight, and the price paid, along with the documentation trail of who it came from. Those records are what make the licensing system work - they turn the anonymous scrap pile into an auditable chain, which is precisely what deters stolen metal from entering the market and what lets police trace it when it does.
For the dealer, the practical implication is systems, not heroics: a receiving process that captures the required details every time, records retained for the required period, and staff who understand that the record is a legal duty, not bookkeeping preference. Councils and police have powers to inspect, and a yard with immaculate metal but chaotic paperwork is a yard inviting a licence review.
Transport businesses meet this regime from two directions. Operators carrying scrap metal as freight should check the businesses they collect from and deliver to are licensed - moving metal for an unlicensed dealer is the kind of association that brings uncomfortable questions, and a licence check on the public register is quick. And fleets that sell their own scrap - written-off vehicles, replaced parts, yard clearances - should deal only with licensed collectors or sites, both for legality and because the licensed dealer’s recorded, non-cash payment is the clean audit trail the fleet’s own books need.
Scrap metal dealing is council-licensed: a site licence for yards, a mobile collector’s licence for rounds, display duties on both, cash payments banned, and records of type, form, weight and price kept on everything received. The regime exists to make metal traceable - treat licensing and records as the price of being in the trade.
The licensing regime carries real teeth because it exists to choke off metal theft, an offence with victims across every infrastructure sector - railways, utilities, church roofs, catalytic converters. Operating without the required licence is itself an offence, and the conduct rules - the cash ban, the record duties - carry their own penalties. The enforcement posture is deliberately joint: councils license, police inspect, and the records duties mean a yard visit can reconstruct months of trading. For legitimate dealers the regime is a moat as much as a burden - licensing squeezes the unlicensed competition that undercuts compliant businesses - and for everyone downstream, buying only from licensed dealers is both the law-adjacent duty and the cheapest available insurance.