Up to one-third of exporters still need to switch to the UK’s Customs Declaration Service (CDS) for exports as there is now less than one month before functionality is removed from the old system, CHIEF, Agency Sector Management (ASM) has warned.
The software provider to the UK Customs clearance and freight forwarding industries is urging any business that submits Customs declarations to HMRC and hasn’t yet made the switch to act now.
The CHIEF legacy system will be closed to new export Customs declarations on June 4 and all export declarations thereafter must be submitted via the CDS.
“CDS has been a long time in the making, with many shifts in the implementation timetable, but we have now reached a critical point—this deadline is definitive, and HMRC insists that CHIEF will be decommissioned in July, so any business that does not make this final transition to CDS with some urgency risks being unable to export goods,” said Simon Adams, programme manager at ASM.
In exceptional circumstances, HMRC will grant permission to use CHIEF for an additional four weeks, but only in cases where an HMRC IT functionality issue is preventing migration. Failure to make the necessary preparations will not be deemed acceptable, stressed ASM.
“With under four weeks to go, our figures suggest up to a third of businesses that need to have not yet made the switch from CHIEF to CDS for exports,” said Adams.
ASM’s Customs clearance platform, Sequoia includes all CDS functionality, and is supported by online guidance and several webinars for customers about CDS.
“We are urging our customers to practice CDS export declarations in the Trader Test Environment (TDR) in Sequoia, which acts exactly like the real system—users can practice until they get it right, and then convert their efforts to live declarations or use them as templates for future declarations.”