On the 4th October 2001, LANGDON announced that contracts had been signed with a major US corporate client to provide Customs reporting for Imports into the UK and Netherlands through one single Customs administration under a Single European Authorisation.

Under the Single European Authorisation, all import duties would be reported to UK Customs Authorities through CHIEF, utilising the LANGDON web based application e-CFSP, with VAT and statistics reported direct to the Dutch Authorities.

The project was working to incredibly tight timescales and presented new challenges to the Customs authorities. This would be the third Single European Authorisation agreed between UK and Dutch Customs to go live, and would also utilise full web based technology, making it Europe's first true internet based Customs reporting system reporting directly to Customs using EDI messaging.

LANGDON Custom's consultants Dave Bradbury and Jan Akkermans provided full Customs support in achieving the Single European Authorisation, and worked closely with both the client and Customs in the UK and The Netherlands. This is the second project that LANGDON have successfully negotiated on behalf of their clients.

Despite the tight timescales and the innovative approach to using the Internet as a tool for Customs reporting, the system underwent full testing during December 2001 and went live on January 2002.

The project was delivered to the customer on time, to budget and with full Customs approval.

The Customer, who cannot be identified for commercial reasons, said "We set LANGDON a very tight deadline on this and they have gone out of their way to support us in achieving our target - beyond what they were contractually obliged to do."

The benefits for the Customer in achieving a Single European Authorisation for their Customs reporting have been identified as:

• A positive return on investment of £200,000 per annum
• Improved relationship with Customs as they deal only with one Customs administration
• Significantly reduced compliance risk
• Significantly reduced administrative burden

e-CFSP represents major opportunities for companies both small and corporate to consolidate their Customs reporting obligations with accurate and timely management information reports in support. By utilising web-enabled technologies that simply and effectively reduce their compliance issues, it further reduces costs of administration, hardware and software through the payment of clearly constructed subscription costs.