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Bord Bia

Customs Requirements

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What you need to know

Since January 2021

  • For goods brought into Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) from the EU, you (or someone who deals with customs for you) may be able to delay import declarations. 
  • However, you cannot delay declarations and must follow the normal rules for making an import declaration if either:
  • Your goods are controlled for example, fish and fish product imports into Great Britain would fall into this category.   
  • HMRC has told you to, because you have a poor compliance record.  

For products such as these, complete customs declarations must be submitted to HMRC from the 1st January 2021. 

  • Intrastat declarations are required for 2021 on certain goods being imported into Great Britain from the EU and being sent from Northern Ireland to the EU.

HMRC are implementing two import models 

  • Temporary storage (where you have up to 90 days to decide what customs procedure you will use after import).   
  • Pre-lodgement model. The pre-lodgement model is helpful as some ports don’t have storage capacity.

Please see the list of UK RoRo Ports. 

You or your agent should submit the export declaration electronically through Revenue’s AEP system from January onwards.  

  • You, your haulier or a customs agent also needs to engage with Revenue’s Customs RoRo Service to generate a Pre-Boarding Number (PBN) ID for consignments being exported to Great Britain from January onwards.  
  • Determine the Importer of Record in the UK (Incoterms). 
  • Decide who will make customs declarations in the UK. You can hire someone to deal with customs and transport the goods for you, or you can do it yourself. 
  • Check how will you account for import VAT – postponed VAT accounting. 
  • If you are importing commercial samples into the UK, click on this link for more guidance.

Since October 2021  

  • Full customs declarations for all goods are required at the point of import through Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight system (CHIEF) or Customs Declaration Service (CDS), and importers will not be able to defer their payment of any tariffs if they do not have a Deferred Payment Authorisation in place.
  • The updated Border operating model has not been published at this point by HMRC any relevant amendments as required will be updated in due course.