The UK government is committed to providing support for businesses engaged in new processes required under the Northern Ireland Protocol. To meet this commitment and to manage external readiness challenges, HMRC is procuring a Northern Ireland Trader Support Service.
The service would provide a route for traders and carriers to comply with changes set out in the command paper on the movement of goods under the Northern Ireland Protocol from 1 January 2021.
The trader support service will be a free at the point of use service available to all traders moving goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and importing goods into Northern Ireland from the Rest of the World for at least 2 years (when the service and its future will be reviewed).
On 20 May, HMG published a command paper setting out how the Northern Ireland Protocol will be implemented within the UK.
This paper set out that application of the protocol will involve some changes for Northern Ireland goods movements at the end of the transition period..
The UK Government is clear in its commitment to give businesses the information and support needed to get ready for these changes at the end of the transition period. As part of this, HMRC is prepared to provide extensive support for businesses and plans to procure a Northern Ireland Trader Support Service.
The service should be operational from September and it will be able to help all traders, regardless of size and at no cost, to move their goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and to import goods into Northern Ireland from the Rest of the World in compliance with the NI protocol.
As part of the procurement we are looking for the following core services:
Trader education — the service should:
Educate businesses on what the protocol means for them and the steps they need to take to comply with them (including getting an Economic Operators Registration and Identification (EORI) number).
Support businesses developing processes to accurately provide the trader support service with all the information it needs to submit declarations on their behalf (including information on the ‘risk’ status of the goods).
Advise businesses on the additional documents/licences that they will need (for example, a permit is needed to import endangered species (CITES) goods).
Complete processes — the service should:
— submit relevant declarations into CDS (and hold the necessary authorisations required for simplified declarations);
— submit relevant safety and security declarations into HMRC’s Import Control System (ICS).
The intention is that the TSS will have its own guarantee, duty deferment account (DDA) and authorisations and will represent most traders indirectly, which will remove these requirements from many businesses.
In order to be fully operational the trader support service will need to work with HMRC to secure CDS software packages and ensure community service providers (CSPs) readiness as any third party will only be able to complete declarations once they have a CDS-ready software package available to them and CSPs are critical actors at some NI entry points.