天美影院

1. Background and methodology

This summary report presents the key findings from the sixth wave of research with customs intermediaries, conducted on behalf of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). HMRC commissioned Ipsos to undertake research to understand the customs intermediary sector. This has been conducted over 6 waves between June 2020 and October 2022. The sixth wave explored the sector鈥檚 provision of services, how they complete customs declarations and their challenges, as well as how they are preparing for upcoming changes to customs processes. Previous waves of the research explored the sector鈥檚 preparations for EU Exit, the end of the transition period, as well as capacity for increased custom declarations and new customs processes that were put in place.

Survey results are subject to margins of error, which vary with the sample size and the percentage figure concerned. The report only comments on subgroup differences or wave by wave changes where these were found to be statistically significant at the 95% level of confidence.

The research focused on customs intermediaries who made customs declarations on behalf of traders (either in-house, through outsourcing to another customs intermediary, or a mix of both). The Wave 6 survey took place between 17 August 2022 and 7 October 2022 and consisted of 670 telephone interviews with customs intermediaries (230 of whom had taken part in earlier surveys). In addition, 15 follow-up, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted via telephone between 30 September 2022 and 10 October 2022. The findings in this report were correct at the time of asking but may not reflect the current situation.

2. Key findings

• full customs export declarations remained the most common type of declaration completed in-house by customs intermediaries (86%), followed by full customs import declarations (80%). Compared with Wave 5, more customs intermediaries said they completed simplified frontier declarations (SFD) (44% in Wave 6 vs. 32% in Wave 5) and entry in declarants records (33% in Wave 6 vs. 23% in Wave 5)

• nearly 4 in 10 customs intermediaries made declarations on behalf of traders moving goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland (37%). Of this group, the majority said they used the Trader Support Service to process these declarations (71%). The main challenges reported when completing declarations for trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland were a lack of specialist expertise (26%) and lack of local knowledge (20%)

• half (50%) of customs intermediaries had access to the Customs Declaration Service (CDS) system, an increase from 20% at Wave 5. Awareness of CDS had also increased to 92% from 77% at Wave 5. Among the 34% who had not fully transitioned to CDS, the most common barrier to doing this was knowledge of how to declare on CDS (20%), followed by difficulties in registering on CDS (12%) and a perceived lack of information (10%). The information sources considered the most useful for learning about CDS were the HMRC website (22%), HMRC newsletters or emails (16%) and software providers (14%). At the time of fieldwork, the closing date for export declarations on the previous CHIEF system was 31 March 2023, which was revised to 30 November 2023 in December 2022

• four in ten (37%) customs intermediaries felt the quality of service in the sector overall needed improvement, and 6 in 10 (65%) described challenges to improving their own quality of service. These challenges were varied, but most commonly related to levels of expertise in the workforce (13%) and issues transitioning to the new CDS system (11%). Other challenges related to a lack of time and knowledge about how to deliver a quality service

• lack of information or uncertainty around customs requirements remained the main barrier to making customs declarations (24%), followed by concerns around capacity of the CDS system (14%) and a lack of capacity generally across the sector (10%)