Customs Intermediaries

(asked on 17th July 2020) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to The Border with the European Union: Importing and Exporting Goods, published on 13 July 2020, what estimate he has made of the number of business who will need to use a customs intermediary in January 2021.


Answered by
Jesse Norman Portrait
Jesse Norman
This question was answered on 22nd July 2020

The vast majority of the UK’s rest-of-world traders use an agent or intermediary to comply with customs formalities and manage their logistics and transport needs. Based on this, the Government expects that intermediaries will play an essential role as the majority of UK businesses trading with the EU will want to use their services to facilitate the import/export process.

There are a number of different types of customs declarations depending on how goods are moved and under which procedure. It is estimated that traders will need to make c.156-172m additional declarations. HMRC expect most businesses to use an intermediary to do this (eg. a freight forwarder, fast-parcel operator or a customs agent) as over 90 per cent of rest-of-world traders currently use one.

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