Video: Preparing for the Windsor Framework using the TSS Portal (duration 14:07)

[Note: The information contained herein is accurate at the date of this event, however please refer to the written guidance on the Northern Ireland Customs & Trade Academy (NICTA) website for the most up to date guidance.]

Welcome to this walkthrough on how to prepare for the Windsor Framework using the Trader Support Service Portal, which we will refer to as TSS throughout this video.

The Windsor Framework sets out new arrangements including simplified processes for Internal Market Movements, of not at risk goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

During this video, we will help you prepare for the new arrangements by providing an overview of the simplified processes for Internal Market Movements, and demonstrating setup tasks in TSS.

By the end of this video, you should know what information is required on your TSS Company Profile to use the simplified processes, and know how to set up the authorisations and permissions on your TSS Company Profile to benefit from the simplified processes.

The simplified processes for Internal Market Movements contain a range of facilitations to ease the process of moving goods, not at risk of entering the European Union.

This includes parcels and freight moving from a business in Great Britain to a business in Northern Ireland.

Businesses should be ready for the new simplifications by the 31st of March 2025.

Under the simplified processes, if you are moving goods that are not at risk of entering the EU, you can take advantage of a simplified data set called the Internal Market Movement Information also known as IMMI and the Trader Goods Profile which is an optional tool available to support completion of the IMMI. To access the simplified processes you will need to be authorised under the UK Internal Market Scheme known as UKIMS and be moving eligible goods.

The Internal Market Movement Information or IMMI provides the option to submit a the reduced data set for not at risk goods.

The IMMI can be used instead of submitting a full frontier declaration or a post-movement supplementary declaration.

The information required is significantly less than that required for the movement of at risk goods.

You can use the IMMI before the goods are due to move or when the goods have arrived.

This provides flexibility to use the varied movement options most suited to your business model.

However, it does not change the requirement for a safety and security declaration, also known as an entry summary declaration, pre-arrival.

If your goods are already in Northern Ireland under certain customs special procedures, and you meet the criteria to use the simplified processes, you can utilise the IMMI to release those goods to free circulation in Northern Ireland.

To further simplify the IMMI submission a Trader Goods Profile, also referred to as a TGP, has been made available via Gov.UK You can also choose to access the TGP through your TSS portal.

The TGP holds unique records of information of the goods that you commonly move from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

Storing records in TGP helps to minimise the amount of information you need to enter for each goods movement.

You will need to provide permissions for TSS to access your Trader Goods Profile, which can be set up through your TSS Company Profile.

To take advantage of the simplified processes, you need to be authorised under the UK Internal Market Scheme, also known as UKIMS.

If you have not already completed your authorisation, you can find further information on how to do so, follow the Gov.UK website and the Northern Ireland Customs and Trade Academy website. To benefit from the simplified processes, your UKIMS authorisation will need to be uploaded to TSS. The simplified processes only apply to goods that are not at risk of entering the EU. These goods must be moved by direct transport from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and be in free circulation in Great Britain prior to movement and are not Category 1 goods.

To determine eligibility for the simplified processes goods have been divided into categories. Standard goods encompass all goods with no controls and includes goods moved under the Northern Ireland Retail Market Scheme, known as NIRMS.

Category 2 goods are those subject to excise special health, licensing or environmental controls.

Category 2 goods include goods moved under the Northern Ireland Plant Health Label, known as NIPHL.

Category 1 goods are not eligible for the simplified processes and are subject to the full customs processes.

Category 1 goods are those subject to sanctions, total bans or prohibitions, trade defence measures, or quotas.

You will have the option to submit the IMMI along with the Entry Summary Declaration prior to the goods movement.

If a haulier is submitting the IMMI on your behalf, then they will need the appropriate permissions to do so.

However, this is optional.

You can choose to follow the same processes you use today.

In this case, a draught supplementary declaration will be generated.

You can then choose to convert that to an IMMI, to submit post-movement.

By submitting the IMMI pre-movement, you can reduce the overall effort as you won’t have to complete a post-movement supplementary declaration.

Here are a few reasons why you should set up a TSS Company Profile.

Once your UKIMS and NIRMS authorisation is uploaded to TSS, these are used to auto-populate the Internal Market Movement Information.

NIRMS information is also used to support the categorisation of your goods on TSS.

You can manage your UKIMS and Trader Goods Profile permissions as well as authorise hauliers, agents or intermediaries to submit the IMMI on your behalf.

This demonstration shows how the primary account holder, would set up the TSS Company Profile and grant relevant permissions.

Start by navigating to the TSS landing page for your company and this demonstration uses an example trader account.

Select the Company Profile from the options at the top of the screen.

Once in the TSS Company Profile a good place to start is the Windsor Framework Readiness questionnaire, at the top of the Company Profile page.

The questionnaire helps you identify what actions are outstanding.

To begin, you will need to select either Yes or No for the first question, are you planning to use the Windsor Framework Features. Selecting Yes will present the status of your UKIMS, NIRMS and TGP through your TSS Company Profile. You can navigate to the relevant section to make updates from the links here. Only the primary account holder can select response to the questions, however all users are able to view the responses.

You may have already uploaded your UKIMS authorisation to TSS to benefit and declare goods, not at risk on your movements today.

If you have not done this yet, you can do so in the document record section of the Company Profile page. Select New to open a new document form and for the Document Type select UKIMS If you have a NIRMS authorisation, you can also add this here and you will need to enter your NIRMS scheme number. Add your UKIMS authorisation number, which should start with XIUKIM from the HMRC letter into the authorisation document reference field.

TSS will validate the document and populate the verified date.

Complete the EORI field with EORI number associated with your UKIMS authorisation.

This will start with either XI or GB.

Click the paperclip icon on the top right upload a copy of the letter from HMRC, confirming your UKIMS authorisation.

Click the Submit button to send the information to TSS.

The status will show is pending verification until validated, and if successful, it will change to active.

Note you will need to add your UKIMS authorisation before you will get access to the simplified processes in TSS.

Once you’ve done that, the next step is to provide TSS with access to your Trader Goods Profile, if you are using one.

To do this, locate the Trader Goods Profile authorisation section within the Company Profile page and click Authorise.

You’ll be directed to Gov.UK to authorise TSS on your Government Gateway.

To do so, log in using your Gov.UK account associated with your CDS subscription, which is also linked to the EORI you are UKIMS authorised under.

Follow the on-screen instructions and you will be asked to confirm that you allow TSS to access your Trader Goods Profile, which is hosted by HMRC.

Once you have confirmed, the TGP state would change to authorised.

The next step is to set up appropriate third party permissions to use your UKIMS authorisation and access your Trader Goods Profile.

This is useful if you want to allow a third party to raise an IMMI on your behalf, or, you want them to be able to view your TGP information and use TGP entries on an IMMI.

The parties can be enabled to edit your TGP entries if you give them the relevant edit permissions to do so.

To complete this step, locate the section from within the Company Profile, titled UKIMS and Trader Goods Profile Access, and then click on Manage Permissions. You will need to have an active, or pending, UKIMS document uploaded to TSS before you can manage third party access to your UKIMS authorisation.

For the Trader Goods Profile, you’ll be able to do this once you have given TSS access to your TGP.

On the Manage Permissions page, by default access is not provided to any third party, only to you as the account holder.

Granting the party access to your UKIMS Authorisation will allow the permitted third party such as the haulier or intermediary to submit an IMMI on your behalf using your UKIMS authorisation. It is important to note that liability for accuracy of information submitted on the IMMI remains with you, as the UKIMS authorisation holder. There are two different options when granting third party permissions and considerations to be aware of. In both cases the IMMI submitter will need to know your EORI associated to your UKIMS authorisation, to submit this information on the TSS portal.

You can grant access to specific third party TSS accounts, who move goods on your behalf, or who will submit the IMMI on your behalf.

This reduces the risk of using your UKIMS authorisation unknowingly, however, it means that the holder will need to grant access to each account, on a case by case basis.

Under the Suggested Account heading, you will find a list of related parties.

This is a list of third party TSS accounts based on your previous goods movements on TSS.

If you want to allow any of these third parties to access your UKIMS or TGP, you can click the ‘Grant Permissions’ button and they will move to the existing permissions section below.

You can see here that UKIMS permissions have been granted and the accounts have view only access to the TGP.

Within the existing permissions section, you can make further updates if needed.

For example, you may want to allow an account to edit TGP entries, to do so click the Edit button.

Or, if you wish to remove permissions from an account, you can select Delete.

If you want to grant permissions to an account that is not already listed, you can do so by clicking on Add Permissions, providing you have the EORI number of their TSS account.

Alternatively, under the Manage Open Access heading, you have the option to allow open access to your UKIMS authorisation. If you allow open access to a UKIMS authorisation, it means that any TSS user can use your authorisation at any time and can submit Internal Market Movement Information on your behalf. They would still need to enter your EORI associated with your UKIMS authorisation. Whilst this option is most facilitative, it does have the risk of misuse of your UKIMS authorisation. You remain liable for all data submitted under your authorisation and need to allow third party access in accordance with this liability.

You also have the same open access option for a third party TSS account to use your Trader Goods Profile on the IMMI. If you decide to manage permissions this way, you can simply take the appropriate boxes here.

You can add, amend and revoke access and permissions at any time. Once you click Submit, the changes will be immediately actioned.

It’s important that you understand your role and responsibilities when taking advantage of the simplified processes.

To support you, the key trader and haulier responsibilities are called out here.

In addition to this video, the NICTA website also contains the Windsor Framework checklist and guides detailing movement options.

You can navigate to the Windsor Framework checklist, via welcome to NICTA, go to the overview of the Windsor Framework, scroll down and select the checklist.

The Moving Goods option takes you to further information about the Internal Market Movement.

Under the movement declaration support tab, you will find a link to further guidance on the simplified processes for Internal Market Movements.

For anything else, you can refer to the guide directory available for the Support Resources tab.

You can also navigate to regular Bulletins and access Webinars from here.

If you need to check what a specific term means, you can use the Jargon Buster which provides a full glossary of terms.

If you have any questions, please contact the Trader Support Service to help with your query.

You can also reference the guidance available on Gov.UK or find further information on the Northern Ireland Customs and Trade Academy website.

Thank you for listening.

That concludes this video on how to prepare for the new arrangements under the Windsor Framework.