What is the Common Transit Convention (CTC)?

  • A treaty between the countries of the EU and a number of other countries for common procedures for international transit of goods.
  • It simplifies or eliminates much of the paperwork
  • The Common Transit Convention allows traders to:
  • Move goods more quickly
    • Benefit from duty suspension
    • Complete some customs procedures away from the border

How does NCTS support Transit?

  • Transit is a tracking process. It shifts the point that goods have to go into the next customs procedure
  • The customs procedure is delayed by the length of the transit journey
  • Whilst goods are in transit, duty and excise costs are suspended
  • The transit process is initiated by Businesses submitting a transit declaration into their national NCTS system
  • NCTS stands for New Computerised Transit System. This is the name used by all CTC contracting nations.

NCTS service users:

  • mainly traders who move goods
  • Agents
  • third party software developers

Example of transit movement - Switzerland > France (EU) > UK

Why are we delivering Phase 5? (MASP)

  • The New Computerised Transit System (NCTS) is not actually a new system.
  • NCTS phase 5 is part of a programme of planned changes under CTC to the way Transit continues to operate for all contracting parties.
  • Under the current Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP), the UK has agreed to remain aligned with the EU customs legislation – the Union - - - Customs Code (UCC).
  • If HMRC do not implement Phase 5 by Nov 2023, this means that the UK would not be able to offer the transit procedure to customers.

What are the headline changes that are being introduced?

  • Create a new declaration that is in line with the UCC data requirements i.e. changes to messages with new data fields being added.
  • Introduction of Office of incident
  • Provide the ability to amend pre-lodged declarations
  • Harmonisation of rejection messages
  • Amend control results and codes
  • The retainment of existing NCTS Phase 4 functionality not specifically changed by Phase 5.
  • There are 2 NCTS 5 core (GB and NI) and each one needs to be upgraded to phase 5.

Out of scope

  • Introduction of communication between NCTS and AES for indirect exports relating to NI only
  • Welsh language translation

What are the consequences of none delivery?

  • If not delivered by 30 November 2023, the UK (both GB & NI services) will not be able to use CTC Transit.
  • Critical risk to both the UK’s international reputation and our ability to maintain the flow of goods across the border for both GB and NI.
  • Incompatibility between NCTS in the UK, EU and other CTC members means UK would not be able to offer transit until delivery is complete.
  • Failure to deliver against our CTC obligations in GB, and our Union Customs Code requirements in NI would be a public failure of the UK to comply with our international obligations and be in breach of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
  • Only possible contingency would be to negotiate a further extension with the European Commission, EU MS and all other CTC members.
  • There is no guarantee that such an extension would be granted.
  • If there is a hard stop to Transit, Traders and hauliers will face massive impact due to adjusted business models for delayed accounting in NCTS and lack of formal procedures at frontiers.
  • Instant cash flow hit to businesses with Trade bodies likely to be extremely unhappy.
  • UK ports will be critically impacted because everything would have to go through formal import procedure. No physical capacity at ports to hold goods so they would be blocked on day 1.
  • This impacts societally and in public health and welfare terms as it carries the strong likelihood of food and pharmaceutical shortages. Significant reputational damage to HMRC and the UK Government.

Vision

  • An online service enabling the UK to manage the transportation of goods in and out of Great Britain, in line with the Common Transit Convention (CTC).
  • The service will replace the existing NCTS Phase 4 service with new features that will improve traders and software developers experience.

Problem Statement

Provide a way for traders and agents to submit NCTS 5 compliant declarations and notifications. This must take into account any message changes within the technological constraints. This solution will explore existing issues and pain points. Third-party software developers must be able to integrate their software with this solution.

Goal

To ensure that companies can continue to declare and process transit movements in the UK ‘beyond the hard deadline at the end of November 2023’.

Success criteria

The products facilitate the meeting of their primary goal: To ensure that companies can continue to declare and process transit movements in the UK beyond the hard deadline at the end of 2023.

3rd party developers are given enough support and information (within reasonable timescales) to create and deliver their software products.

Comms metrics: Communications to 3rd party developers need to be timely, useful and 2 way (based upon lessons learnt from phase 4).

Technical metrics: The api (and in turn the wider components/platform) can accommodate the projected amount of traffic and size of messages for phase 5.

Technical Metrics: The products must be well built to functional and non-functional requirements and be stable, scalable, maintainable, and updatable

Comms metrics: Information and content on dev hub needs to be easy to find, understandable, accessible and helpful to users.

User satisfaction metrics: The project should be able to gauge, capture and measure user satisfaction data and iterate to improve the products when possible.

Support metrics: There are clear, and functioning lines of support for the products (and the developers/users) to restore services.

User Satisfaction Metrics: Any periods of transition (4 to 5) should accommodate traders ensuring they can continue their business.

High level milestones

  • Alpha Phase - 01/3/22- 03/5/22

  • Beta Development - 4/5/22 - 31/10/23

  • Private Beta Phase - 01/11/23 - 30/11/23 *

  • Public Beta Phase (LID) - 30/11/23 onwards **

  • Web FE Deployment into Production- October 2022 to support 1st code drop E2E Test Phase

  • Web FE Deployment into Production- Nov End 2023

  • API (small messages) Deployment into Test Support Environment - October 2022

  • API (Large messages) deployment into Trader Test environment - March 2023

    * The private beta phase is dependent on confirmation that a transitional approach is possible
    ** This date of 30/11/2023 is an immovable deadline

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