UK Customs Academy

In 2020, the Doing Business Groups team was commissioned by the Institute of Export & International Trade (IOE&IT) to assemble and project-manage the IOE&IT’s ‘UK Customs Academy’ marketing and sales function. The UK Customs Academy was a joint project with the UK Government and HM Revenue & Customs, administered by PwC.

 

Following the announcement that new UK government funding had been made available to help businesses train staff in making customs declarations and to support businesses that assist others in trading goods by investing in IT, efforts were made to ensure that trade with the EU continued as smoothly as possible after the final Brexit customs deadline on 31st December 2020.

 

Customs agents help businesses that trade outside the EU. This funding helped increase the capacity of the sector as businesses trading with the EU considered whether to hire experts to complete customs documentation for them after Brexit. Ministers were determined to support the industry in training more staff and improving efficiency to ensure they were fully prepared for leaving the EU on 31st December 2020, regardless of the circumstances.

 

More than 3,000 customs agents had already been trained as part of an £8 million investment, which was also used to develop new online learning products for customs staff, such as an electronic learning package and the new UK Customs Academy. In the second wave of government grants, an additional £16 million was invested to help ensure businesses had all the support they needed to prepare for Brexit.

 

During the course of this hugely successful 12-month project, the DBG team secured over £8 million in grant funding on behalf of thousands of customs professionals across the UK.