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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.

Amending Customs Declarations has always been a hot topic for either the exporter, importer, or declarant.

The UK Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (UK CBAM) is a forthcoming measure designed to reduce carbon leakage by applying a carbon-related charge to certain carbon-intensive goods imported into the UK. It mirrors the policy intent of the EU CBAM, ensuring imported goods face a comparable carbon cost to goods produced domestically while operating within the UK tax system.

HMRC have advised on the action to be taken when users experience declaration error messages after the NCTS6 update on 1 st June.

HMRC have released final details of the scheduled NCTS downtime needed to support the deployment of NCTS6. The brief 2-hour period of NCTS downtime will impact both the Great Britain (GB) and Northern Ireland (NI) NCTS services.

The Export Control Joint Unit has published Notice to Exporters 2026/13, dated 13th May 2026, confirming the importance of including export licence data in the Customs Declaration.

There will be a short period of NCTS downtime on 1st June 2026, affecting both the Great Britain (GB) and Northern Ireland (XI) NCTS services . The NCTS services are planned to be unavailable as follows: Monday, 1 st June 2026: From 07:00 to 09.00 HMRC have confirmed both services are expected to be fully restored by 09:00 on 1 st June

The Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation (OTSI), which is part of the Department for Business and Trade, published a guidance notice on 22 April 2026 with the title ‘Sanctions End-Use Controls (SEUC): guidance for businesses’.

HMRC will be carrying out planned maintenance on the New Computerised Transit System (NCTS) on Monday, 1st June 2026, from 7 am to 9 am.

On the 29 th April 2026, there will be a system outage to enable HMRC to deploy a fix. This outage will be between 21:30 and 23:00.

HMRC have advised that the Customs Declaration Service (CDS) will be unavailable to users for scheduled maintenance as follows: Wednesday 29 th April 21:30 until 23.00.

April 20 2026, CAPE became live for traders and freight forwarders to arrange for consolidated reclaims of IEEPA duties.

The Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU) of the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) have published NTE 2026/11 detailing that the MOD security approval form 680 (F680) application process is moving from SPIRE to the new LITE application service.