- £50 million added to popular grant fund for customs
agent recruitment, training and IT
- Government plan to change the rules to help agents to
take on more clients
- New opportunities to be created as industry grows
Today (Friday 12 June 2020), the government has
announced the transition period will not be
extended and controls for importing goods will now apply
from July 2021.
As well as giving businesses more time to
prepare, HMRC has unveiled a
new package of measures to accelerate growth of the UK’s
customs intermediary sector.
As well as injecting £50 million to support businesses with
recruitment, training and supplying IT equipment to handle
customs declarations, the government intends to remove
barriers for intermediaries taking on extra clients by
adapting the rules around financial liability.
In total, the government has now made available £84 million
to grow the customs intermediary sector to encompass EU
trade after 2020. At the moment, agents cover non-EU trade
though many, like parcel companies, do operate in the EU
market.
The previous £34 million grants fund supported more than
20,000 training courses being undertaken, plus the purchase
of 15,000 pieces of IT equipment and software.
The intermediary sector – including customs brokers,
freight forwarders and express parcel operators – help
businesses to import and export their goods by ensuring the
necessary customs paperwork has been completed.
The £50 million funding is one part of the measures to
support the customs intermediary sector meet the increased
demand it will see from traders at the end of the
transition period. The government also intends to
change rules which will remove the financial liability from
intermediaries operating on behalf of their clients and
allow parcel operators to continue declaring multiple
consignments in a single customs declaration. This will
help intermediaries increase their operations.
Applications for the new funding will be open from July
and HMRC will unveil more
details in due course.
