Transporting goods across multiple borders can be a complex process, requiring careful navigation of diverse regulations and compliance requirements at each point along the journey.
With each movement across a border, there may be separate customs regimes and requirements to consider. That’s why traders use measures like transit procedures, which facilitate smoother movements when goods must cross multiple borders.
UK traders can make use of transit procedures when moving goods between various nations, allowing them to travel across the borders of the EU and other Common Transit Convention (CTC) countries with duties suspended. This means that import and export declarations and other formalities only need to be carried out for the goods’ country of departure and their final destination.
NCTS5
The system for making transit declarations is the New Computerised Transit System (NCTS). Each member of the CTC has its own national version of the New Computerised Transit System. These systems communicate with one another to oversee and manage the transit process.
In the UK, NCTS Phase 5 (NCTS5), the latest version of the system, was implemented on 1 July 2024. NCTS5 has been deployed in multiple stages and includes a host of major changes aimed at modernising transit, including advanced functionalities for guarantee management that ensure financial coverage is closely monitored throughout the transit journey.
Significant changes with NCTS5
The final stage of NCTS5 in January 2025 brought several significant changes to the process of completing a transit declaration.
The first was the removal of the mandatory requirement for a paper Transit Accompanying Document (TAD) to be moved with the goods in transit. It introduced an electronic presentation of the Movement Reference Number (MRN) for inbound movements and a requirement for commodity codes to be entered for each goods item on a transit declaration – which until that point had been voluntary.
Traders are now able to pre-lodge a transit declaration by submitting a ‘Type D’ additional declaration type, and it can be amended up to 30 days in advance of the movement of the goods. NCTS5 also introduced the ‘office of incident’, to which drivers are obliged to report serious incidents in real time.
The last change with NCTS5 was the introduction of Multiple House Consignments, which requires goods to be declared at the house consignment level. Additionally, the goods must be grouped according to the consignor or consignee rather than declared on the item level.
NCTS6
Phase 1 of NCTS6 was implemented in the UK in September 2025 but the full release date is still to be confirmed and The UK has opted out of combined ENS + Transit filings (TSADs) for now. The next phase was designed to allow the users to create a combined safety and security (S&S) and transit declaration (TSAD). However, each CTC member will be able to decide whether to allow this functionality and currently, only Ireland and Norway are using it. Germany, Netherlands, Belgium – have opted out of combined ENS/EXS transit data and continue migration steps, but not all have confirmed full operational dates. The UK still has the option to adopt TSADs at a later date should it choose to do so.
For countries that opt in to implementing TSAD with NCTS6, the system will allow better integration of transit declarations with entry summary declarations. The next phase should also improve NCTS’ interaction with other customs systems, allowing better data interchange and communication between various customs platforms. For countries that opted out, the impact of the system upgrade will be minimal.