“The NAO report makes for grim reading and is a call to arms for any businesses reliant on products coming through UK borders.

“With an estimated £423bn of trade crossing UK borders every year, a no-deal Brexit could prove incredibly costly for UK businesses in terms of  time and money. There are currently around 15,000 classifications of goods subject to 135 different duty rates. Classification is only one of around 30 pieces of data from various sources needed, usually in real time at the border. That’s a huge amount of paperwork to be done by the estimated quarter of a million traders who have never needed to make a customs declaration before.

“It is anticipated that mitigations will be  found for essential, time sensitive and regulated goods like Medicines and food crossing the UK border, but all businesses dealing in non-essential goods need to accelerate planning for a disorderly no deal scenario in March.  In particular they should start preparing for the needs of customs declarations, and making sure their own suppliers are Brexit ready.

“For our armies of importers and exporters the NAO report today just highlights that the cost of a no-deal Brexit for businesses will be painful and could be significant.”

 

-ENDS-

For further information please contact:

Emma Murray, PR Manager

E: Emma.Murray@kpmg.co.uk

T: +44 (0)207 6946506

About KPMG in the UK

KPMG LLP, a UK limited liability partnership, operates from 22 offices across the UK with approximately 14,500 partners and staff.  The UK firm recorded a revenue of £2.2 billion in the year ended 30 September 2017. KPMG is a global network of professional firms providing Audit, Tax, and Advisory services. It operates in 152 countries and has 189,000 professionals working in member firms around the world. The independent member firms of the KPMG network are affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative ("KPMG International"), a Swiss entity.  Each KPMG firm is a legally distinct and separate entity and describes itself as such.