Back in 2020, the government released its 2025 UK Border Strategy, an 85-page document outlining the post-Brexit policies and strategies surrounding the borders of the United Kingdom. The document covered four key strategies, which received support from stakeholders during the Public Consultation in summer 2020.
A change in border strategies can be worrying or confusing for businesses who rely on international trade. In this post we will break down the new border strategies and explain how it will affect exporters.
The four key strategies in the 2025 UK Border Strategy are:
> Promote UK growth and prosperity by facilitating international trade from businesses of all sizes, while effectively collecting the revenue owed.
Improve: user experience for moving goods, trader perception of the border, and collection of revenue.
> Detect, deter, and disrupt serious and organised crime, terrorism, harm, and threats to biosecurity, on land and at sea, in order to protect the UK’s people, businesses, health, and environment.
Improve: the detection of threats, vulnerabilities of the border and reputation, flow of illicit commodities and identification of threats to public health/biosecurity.
> Facilitate the movement of people that benefits the UK, while preventing abuse of the migration system, and safeguarding vulnerable people.
Improve: user experience for legitimate passengers, detection of abusers of the migration system, and safeguarding illegal border-crossers.
> Be resilient, innovative, and able to respond in an agile manner to major events and changing trends.
Improve: resilience of international supply chains, ability to forecast flow, identification and intervention of border threats, innovation, and agility/expertise of staff.
These strategies are paired with an action plan and trackable outcomes to assess the effectiveness of the strategies, with the general goal to minimise costs, paperwork and waiting times, and increase guidance and informed interventions.
But what does this mean for exporters? Well, hopefully a smoother and quicker process at the border.
The waiting times for imports and exports, especially at ports such as Calais, have been highly reported-on. These delays are reportedly due to increased customs checks after leaving the single market, and a spate of technical problems. However, the government is hoping to negotiate more Free Trade Agreements for an easier exporting process, and the strategies that are being put in place are designed to install trust in those crossing the border.
