HMRC commits to killing legacy customs system...again

Thirty-year-old CHIEF system to be replaced by June

HMRC has given a firm date by which it will stop using the Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (CHIEF) service, though this isn't the first time we've been here.

The CHIEF service was first introduced in 1994. Managed by BT until 2010, for seven years it was handled by Aspire, a collaboration between Capgemini, Fujitsu, and HMRC. That ended in 2017 and HMRC took over management in-house, though retained its former partners as contractors.

Since that time the tax office has been trying to migrate to a replacement called the Customs Declaration Service (CDS), but has hit multiple roadblocks.

Originally, HMRC planned to move all traders from CHIEF to CDS in January 2019. The National Audit Office called this plan "unlikely," as CDS was only planned to be released a month beforehand.

Since then CHIEF has been extended multiple times, including a £168.8 million contract awarded to Fujitsu to keep the system running until 31st March 2021.

In total, HMRC has missed its switch-off deadline five times in as many years, with the most recent date given (in August last year) being 30th March 2024.

We now have yet another new date: 4th June 2024, which HMRC shared in a briefing about the change.

"All businesses can now move their export declarations to the Customs Declaration Service," the department wrote. Businesses now have a transition period during which both CDS and CHIEF will run. After the 4th June, customs declarations will no longer be able to be submitted through CHIEF.

HMRC says CDS is a "more user-friendly, streamlined system with greater functionality." More than 100 million declarations have been submitted through it since began operating in 2018.

Post-Brexit border controls have been difficult to get a handle on, with multiple overlapping systems requiring traders to submit information to three or more services - including CHIEF.

We asked HMRC whether CDS will replace all of these services, and received this in response:

"The Customs Declaration Service is the UK's new single customs platform, a modern, secure IT platform supporting businesses to make import and export declarations into and out of the UK. All other customs related systems have been integrated into CDS and will function as they did with CHIEF."