Excavated soil removed from a site is classified as waste under the EC Waste Framework Directive, as some soils are contaminated, which means that certain safeguards are required. Unfortunately, this has led to restrictions on the transfer of good quality soil to other sites and can lead to good quality soils being buried in landfill. To address this, DEFRA worked with the Environment Agency, Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) and industry to try and agree a Waste Quality Protocol setting out when soil should be regarded as safe and where it would be acceptable for soil to be transferred to another site without the need for treatment or being subject to permitting requirements. However, this ran into difficulties due to the lack of a straightforward way of determining when soil should be regarded as safe. Alternative risk based approaches to managing soil from uncontaminated sites are now being looked at.