News
HMRC has advised that the Customs Declaration Service (CDS) will be unavailable from Saturday 4 July to Sunday 5 July 2026 due to scheduled maintenance.
HMRC have advised that the Customs Declaration Service (CDS) will be out of service from the evening of Saturday 4 th July, running into the early hours of Sunday 5 th July 2026. There has been further confirmation that this CDS downtime will impact the New Computerised Transit System (NCTS) declarations.
The Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has announced that the long-awaited Free Trade Agreement between the UK and India will enter into force on 15 July 2026.
Following the publication of the Ministerial Statement and Policy paper in March this year, further regulatory detail has been released ahead of the implementation of a 50% standard tariff duty on certain steel products from 1 st July 2026.
The DBT has published details of the UK’s steel trade measures, which include a 60% reduction in steel import quotas and a 50% tariff on specified steel imports, to be implemented from July 1 st 2026.
The UK has introduced digital ATA Carnets, or e-carnets, as of 1st June 2026, in line with the EU Member States, Norway, and Switzerland, which have released their digital versions of the Customs procedure.
HMRC have published a service update confirming the launch of a new Online Tariff Tool Developer Portal, enabling the management of Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, for those that use direct data access to the UK Trade Tariff.
CDS 5.2.0 for release on the 4 th July 2026. During this period, please note that any pre-lodged declarations affected by the changes should be amended before the goods arrive. If customs declarations are not correct prior to arrival, they will be rejected.
On the 2 nd of June 2026, the USTR (Office of the United States Trade Representative) updated its Section 301 investigation into the tariffs under the Trade Act of 1974 regarding forced labour.
