Re: Authorised Economic Operator Status (EU) - HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Custom
I spent the day yesterday with HMRC looking at their requirements so things are a little clearer to me now.
On incoming goods from purchase order to receipt at plant in UK, they are requiring a full audit trail and documented procedures and the same with goods manufactured in EU and exported outside they are looking for trail from customer order to port of departure.
They are obviously looking at our customs procedures and financial procedures.
The largest element is safety and security and this is quite an indepth section. This not only includes the physical sites and goods but IT security protocols etc.
Some of it is aligned to 9001 & 18001 but at a far greater level. From their initial walk around of our site, which was not part of the audit process, they picked up on lack of segregation between domestic (EU) orders and Ex EU orders on our loading decks, Vehicles in the yard being parked too close to the fence and not locked, Pallets stored too close to our boundary fence. No clear desk policy.
3 years full employment history for all employees including temporary and contract (i.e. security, cleaners etc) workers.
It is going to be quite some ordeal pulling all our sites into compliance and if one site fails on one element the status is rejected for the whole of the company.
We also have to have very detailed outsource supplier controls, especially on transportation, warehousing and our outsourced packers and manufacturers and some of these will also need to be audited to ensure they meet "our" requirements far beyond what we would normally look for in an outsourced supplier.
My initial advice to any company within the EU looking to obtain this before the July 2013 date when it becomes almost mandatory for goods coming in and out of the EU, is start looking into it as soon as possible as it is not something that will be easy to acheive at the last minute.
Chrissie