Booking a Medway tip visit: permits, vans and what is accepted

Medway Council operates its own household waste sites for residents of Chatham, Gillingham, Rainham, Rochester, Strood and the Hoo Peninsula. They are free for household waste, but they are for residents: staff can ask for proof of address, so take a council tax bill, utility bill or driving licence.

If you live outside Medway — Maidstone, Gravesham, Swale, Tonbridge and Malling and the rest of the county — your sites are run by Kent County Council instead, under KCC's own permit and residency rules. The two systems are separate, which is where most of the confusion on the phone comes from.

This is the rule that catches people out. Arriving in a van, a pickup, a crew cab or towing a trailer requires a permit arranged with the council in advance. Turning up without one usually means being turned away at the barrier with a full vehicle.

Permits are issued for household waste only and there is a limit on how many visits you get. Borrowing a friend's van for a house clearance is therefore rarely the shortcut it looks like — you need the permit first, and the number of trips is capped.

Trade waste is refused outright, regardless of the vehicle. If the waste came from a business, a rental property you let, a shop, a pub or a building job you were paid for, it is commercial waste and must go through a registered carrier with a transfer note.

Sites also restrict or refuse asbestos, clinical and sharps waste, gas bottles, fuels, solvents and bulk tyres. Those need a specialist licensed contractor, and we cannot take them either.

A car boot of garden waste, cardboard or a few bags of household clear-out is exactly what these sites exist for, and it is free. Do that trip.

The maths changes with bulk and weight. A sofa, a mattress and a fridge from a first-floor flat means a van hire, a permit, fuel, two people, two lifts each way and most of a Saturday. Our fixed prices — £60 a mattress, £70 a fridge, £120–£180 for upholstery, £140 for a quarter van load — usually come in below the cost of doing it yourself, and you get a waste transfer note that the tip does not issue.

A tip visit leaves no record. That is fine for household waste you carried yourself, but it is no help at all if a council later asks a landlord, a trader or a business to prove where waste went.

A registered carrier issues a waste transfer note naming both parties, describing the waste and identifying the permitted site it went to. Businesses must keep those for two years, and for landlords they are the evidence that the void clearance was handled lawfully.