Inland border facilities: what they do, and what changes in early 2027

An inland border facility is a government site away from the port where customs and document checks happen and where a haulier can start or end a transit movement. On 26 October 2026 gov.uk announced that the customs functions at Sevington and Holyhead will transition to the Port of Dover, Getlink and the Holyhead port operator from early 2027 — while Sevington's Border Control Post, where health and plant checks happen, is not affected. This sets out what the facilities do, what moves and what does not.

What is an inland border facility?

An inland border facility is a government site away from the port where customs and document checks can be carried out, and where a haulier can start or end a transit movement. It exists because the short Channel crossings have no room to do that work at the quayside.

The key idea is that the facility acts as a customs office of departure or destination. A vehicle can therefore open a transit movement inland, drive to the port as a sealed and declared load, and cross without the paperwork being handled at the frontier — which is what keeps a RoRo port moving at all.

It is not a warehouse and not a clearance agent. Nothing is stored there, nobody lodges your declaration for you, and a visit is a stop of minutes to hours rather than a place a consignment waits. Where goods do need to wait, that is temporary storage, covered in how long customs clearance takes.

Which facilities are operating, and which have closed?

The network is far smaller than it was in 2021. Two matter for the Channel and the Irish Sea today, and at least one well-known site has been shut for years.

Gov.uk still publishes the Ebbsfleet page carrying the closure notice, which is worth knowing because routing instructions and internal procedures written in 2021 still name it. Several other sites were consolidated out of the network over the same period; the authoritative list is the gov.uk collection rather than any guide, including this one.

Why would a load be sent to one?

Because the movement needs a customs office and the port cannot be it. Three situations account for most visits.

1. Starting a transit movement out of Great Britain, where the office of departure has to open the movement before the vehicle reaches the frontier.
2. Ending a transit movement into Great Britain, where an office of destination has to discharge it.
3. A document that needs endorsing, such as an ATA Carnet, which is stamped at a customs office rather than at a barrier.

Our TIR and common transit article covers what opening and discharging a movement actually involves. The short version is that a transit movement without an office at each end is not a transit movement, and the facility is that office.

What is changing at Sevington and Holyhead?

The customs work moves to the ports. Gov.uk published this on 26 October 2026: customs checks undertaken through Sevington are to transition to alternative locations provided by the Port of Dover and Getlink, who operate Eurotunnel, and at Holyhead customs checks will transition to infrastructure provided by the port operator within Holyhead Port.

The timing is stated as from early 2027, although the exact timing remains subject to final confirmation. That phrasing is doing real work — it is a direction of travel with a season attached, not a date you can put in a contract.

The substantive loss for hauliers is narrower than the headline. From early 2027, facilities to start and end transit movements will no longer be provided at Sevington, so the question is not where the building is but who performs the office function.

What will traders have to do instead?

Three routes, and gov.uk names all three.

The middle row is the one worth planning around, because it is a commercial relationship rather than a government counter. An Authorised Consignor opens movements at its own site under its own authorisation, which is faster than any facility visit — and it is a service somebody charges for, which is a change in cost structure rather than in geography.

Does this affect health and plant checks?

No, and this is the distinction most summaries of the announcement will lose. Gov.uk states that Sevington Border Control Post, where sanitary and phytosanitary checks are undertaken, is not affected by this change and will remain operational until further notice.

So the site splits in two. The customs function moves to the ports; the SPS function stays where it is. A food or plant consignment routed to Sevington for a physical check is unaffected by the 2027 transition, while a transit movement opened at the same postcode is not.

Our IPAFFS pre-notification article covers which goods get routed to a Border Control Post and how the notification reaches the border. The two regimes share a gate and almost nothing else.

What should you do now?

Nothing urgent, which gov.uk says in terms: there are no immediate changes to existing customs processes or requirements. The planning work is for the first half of 2027 rather than this quarter.

1. Check whether any movement you run depends on an inland office for starting or ending transit.
2. Ask your declarant whether it holds, or can access, Authorised Consignor or Consignee approval.
3. Price the alternative, because a commercial service replaces a free government counter.
4. Separate your SPS routing from your customs routing in any procedure document, since only one of them is moving.
5. Re-read the announcement before committing, because the timing is explicitly not confirmed.

What does a facility visit cost in time?

A leg, and that is the honest unit. A facility visit adds a diversion, a queue of unknown length and a departure slot that has already moved — and none of those has a published figure, so anybody quoting you one is quoting a hope.

What can be said is the shape of the risk. An inland office sits away from the port, so the vehicle drives to it, waits, and then drives to the frontier against a crossing booking made earlier. That is why the Authorised Consignor route is attractive quite apart from 2027: a movement opened at the loading site has no diversion in it at all.

Where waiting does happen, it is charged, and our demurrage, detention and waiting time article covers how those charges behave and who ends up paying them.

How does this sit with the rest of the border?

As one of four things that can stop a vehicle, rather than the main one. The customs office function is procedural; the others are informational and they bite earlier.

Three of those four are settled before the wheels turn: see safety and security declarations and GVMS. The facility is the only one that is a physical destination, which is why it is the one that shows up in a driver's day.

What is an Authorised Consignor, and is it worth getting?

An Authorised Consignor is a trader approved to open transit movements at its own premises instead of presenting the goods at a customs office, and an Authorised Consignee is the mirror image for closing them. It is an authorisation held by the business, not a service bought per load.

The appeal is geometric rather than financial. A movement opened at the loading bay turns a three-leg journey — site, inland office, port — into a two-leg one, which removes a queue of unknown length from a day that has a crossing booking in it. That gain exists today and does not depend on the 2027 transition at all.

The cost is approval and discipline: HMRC is extending trust in exchange for records and procedures, and a business that cannot keep them should not seek it. For traders moving a handful of consignments a year the sensible route is somebody else's authorisation, bought as a service — which is precisely the option gov.uk now points at.

What is our part in this?

We run the vehicles on these movements and we are not a customs agent, so the declarant decides where the office function happens and we route to it. What we need before a vehicle commits is which location it is reporting to, and whether that stop is before or after the crossing booking.

The 2027 transition matters to us for one reason: it changes where our vehicles go, not what they carry. A movement opened by an Authorised Consignor at the loading site is a straight run to the port; one that needs an office visit is a different route with a different clock. Our European road freight page sets out the movements, and customs where we coordinate with a broker and where we do not.

For the paperwork either side of it, see NCTS transit and commercial invoices; for goods arriving rather than leaving, how long customs clearance takes.