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Partially decommissioned server racks with coiled cabling and an asset clipboard on a flight case
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Scope a decommissioning properly, before anyone quotes it.

Answer fourteen questions about the data centre, data hall, colocation cage, comms room or office floor you need to clear. You get the compliance duties your answers actually trigger with the liable party named, a sequenced phase plan, the close-out pack to demand and a sweep list for the data-bearing devices everyone forgets.

This is a scoping aid, not legal advice. It cannot tell you whether you are compliant, and it never returns a price or a duration, because both depend on a site survey. Your answers never leave your browser: everything runs locally and nothing is sent or stored. Compliance content last reviewed 10 August 2026.

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Every question is here because a different answer produces a different task list, a different trade on site or a different legal duty. If you are not sure about the plant, say so. It is a first-class answer and it produces a risk flag rather than a wrong assumption.

0 of 14 answered

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Question 1

Where is the site?

Waste rules and the named regulator differ across the UK. The duty cards below are written for England and Wales, with the differences flagged.

Question 2

What are you clearing?

This sets the whole template. A plant-heavy data hall and a distributed office floor are different jobs with different risks.

Question 3

Roughly how big is it?

Scale drives the crew size, the lifting plan and whether the works are large enough to cross a notification threshold.

Question 4

Is anything still live?

Pulling something that is still serving production is the classic decommissioning incident. This drives the whole dependency and change control workstream.

Question 5

What cooling is being removed?

Refrigerant is the most commonly missed regulated stream in a strip-out. If you are not sure, say so: it changes the survey, not the answer.

Question 6

What UPS and battery arrangement is in scope?

Battery chemistry decides the waste route, the transport rules and the storage precautions while the batteries sit on site.

Question 7

What fire suppression is in the room?

The agent decides whether recovery is a regulated activity, and the system has to be disarmed before anyone touches anything else.

Question 8

When was the building built or last significantly refurbished?

A fact you already know, not a legal question. It decides whether asbestos has to be ruled out before anyone opens a riser or lifts a floor.

Question 9

What is in scope besides the IT equipment?

Choose everything that applies. This is the line most often argued about after the crew has demobilised.

Choose all that apply

Question 10

What does the handback obligation look like?

The end state decides the size of the job. "Not sure" is a common and honest answer, and it produces a useful output.

Question 11

Roughly how many data-bearing devices are involved?

A rough band is enough. Count anything that could hold data, not just servers and laptops.

Question 12

Do you already have a store of retired IT waiting to be dealt with?

The storeroom, the basement, the spare meeting room. It is frequently a bigger exposure than the live estate you are retiring.

Question 13

Who owns the assets?

Leased and financed kit has to go back, not out. Getting this wrong is a contractual problem rather than a regulatory one, and it is expensive.

Question 14

What is driving the date?

Sequencing depends on the longest lead item, which in office jobs is usually a carrier circuit cease rather than anything physical.

14 questions left

Your brief will appear here once you have answered the questions.

Questions people ask about decommissioning scope

What does the Decommissioning Scope Builder actually produce?+

Fourteen answers about the site produce a tailored brief: a plain summary of your scope, the compliance duties your specific answers trigger with the regulator and the liable party named, a sequenced phase plan with the phases you do not need removed, the close-out documents to demand with retention periods where they are verified, a room-by-room sweep list for data-bearing devices people forget, risk flags, and the points where you should get specialist advice. It is a scoping aid, not legal advice, and it never returns a price or a duration.

Does it cover office comms rooms as well as data centres?+

Yes. The first question selects the template. A whole data centre, a data hall, a colocation cage, an office comms room and an office floor with distributed IT are five different jobs with different risks, so a colocation cage does not get a plant strip-out phase and an office floor gets a room-by-room device sweep instead of a rack sweep.

Do my answers get sent anywhere, or do I have to give an email address?+

Neither. The whole tool runs in your browser, no answers are transmitted or stored, and the full result is shown without a signup. You can print the brief or save it as a PDF straight from the browser.

Who is responsible for keeping the F-gas record when a contractor removes the cooling?+

The equipment owner or operator, not the contractor. Where the equipment holds F gas equivalent to 5 tonnes of CO2 or more, which most data centre cooling plant does, GOV.UK guidance is that the owner keeps the records for five years and that they must include the name, address and certificate number of any company used to install, service or decommission the equipment. If that certificate number is not captured on the day the unit is de-gassed, the gap in the record cannot be filled later.

Does the October 2026 digital waste tracking deadline make me non-compliant?+

Not as a waste producer. Phase 1 of mandatory digital waste tracking binds permitted sites that receive waste, from October 2026 in England and Wales and from January 2027 in Scotland and Northern Ireland, with the rest of the waste industry including carriers, brokers and dealers planned to follow from October 2027. Waste exemptions are not in Phase 1 at all. What it means for a producer is practical rather than legal: your carrier and your treatment site need to be on the service, and your paperwork will change format.

Are lithium UPS batteries hazardous waste?+

Under the current waste codes, no. Waste lithium ion batteries sit under codes 16 06 05 and 20 01 34, which are absolute non-hazardous entries, an artefact of the codes predating commercial lithium ion. Lead acid batteries are an absolute hazardous entry and need a consignment note. That said, non-hazardous is not the same as low risk: lithium is a significant fire risk and is dangerous goods in transport under class 9.

Note: The duty content is written primarily for England and Wales, with the differences in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland flagged rather than resolved, and with a divergence note for sites outside Great Britain. Every duty card links to the primary source it comes from and carries a last reviewed date. Where a point could not be confirmed against a primary source, the tool phrases it conditionally and points you at the regulator instead of asserting it. You remain the waste producer and the data controller, and neither responsibility can be contracted away.