Monthly Trade News · September 2026

UK Trade News Roundup: September 2026 — What Changed and What To Do Now

Four stories this month, and the first one is the trickiest to act on — mainly because most businesses affected by it don't yet realise it applies to them.

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1. A New Import Restriction Is Coming, and the Paperwork Doesn't Exist Yet to Comply With It

On 8 September the government confirmed it will ban imports of goods originating from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, alongside a ban on UK companies providing financing, construction, infrastructure, real estate or advertising services connected to settlement expansion. Sanctions against a small number of named individuals, designated under the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020, took effect the same day — asset freezes and travel bans that apply right now, regardless of when the wider import ban becomes law.

The import ban itself is not yet in force. Legislation is expected within six to nine months, which puts it somewhere around March to June 2027. That gap matters, because it gives businesses time to sort out something that's currently a genuine mess: Israeli export documentation doesn't distinguish settlement-origin goods from goods produced by Palestinian businesses or by Israeli businesses inside the pre-1967 "green line." Everything simply gets labelled as coming from "the West Bank."

There is one existing mechanism to build from. Under the UK-Israel free trade agreement, goods from "territories brought under Israeli administration since June 1967" already don't qualify for preferential tariff treatment — so if you've been correctly claiming preference on Israeli imports, you should already have some paperwork trail showing where goods actually came from. The Department for Business and Trade also maintains a postal code list of known settlement locations, which is a useful practical tool, though it only stays accurate if it's updated as fast as settlements expand.

For scale: UK-Israel trade was worth around £6 billion in 2025, against roughly £38 million in UK trade with the Occupied Palestinian Territories — settlement goods are a small slice of a much larger relationship, which is exactly why they're easy to lose track of inside a supply chain. If you import precious stones or metals, medical equipment, plastics, machinery or fresh produce from Israeli suppliers, now is the point to start asking suppliers directly where goods are actually produced, and to check any Israeli counterparties against the current sanctions list.

This is origin due diligence in the same sense as any other sanctions or export control question — knowing where goods actually come from, not just who invoiced you. Our Introduction to Export Controls and Licensing course covers exactly this kind of due diligence. GOV.UK carries the announcement in full.

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2. French Customs Are Actually Checking Pallets Now

Since 1 September, French border authorities have been physically inspecting wood packaging arriving from outside the EU — pallets, crates, cable drums, dunnage — for compliance with ISPM 15. Nothing about the underlying rule has changed. What's changed is that it's now actually being checked at the border rather than assumed.

ISPM 15 requires wood packaging to be heat-treated to 56°C for at least 30 continuous minutes through the entire profile of the wood, or fumigated, and then stamped with the IPPC mark showing the country code, the treatment facility's producer code, and the treatment method used (HT for heat treatment, MB for methyl bromide fumigation). Processed wood products — plywood, OSB, particleboard — are exempt, as is any timber 6mm thick or less, and wine or spirit gift boxes made from processed wood.

A failed check means the packaging can be destroyed on the spot, and whatever was strapped to it gets delayed at best, refused at worst. Most businesses never check this themselves, because pallets get bought from a supplier and compliance gets assumed rather than verified. It usually is fine. But the exporter's name is the one on the paperwork if it isn't, not the pallet supplier's. Worth asking your supplier directly for their treatment facility registration and keeping a copy on file, rather than finding out at a French border post that "it's always been fine before" isn't actually evidence of anything.

Our Export Documentation Training course covers the paperwork that keeps shipments like this moving, including where responsibility sits when something further down the supply chain goes wrong. The UK-side rules are set out in full on GOV.UK.

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3. Northern Ireland Traders Have a Hard Deadline: 20 October

The Trader Support Service is the free platform that handles supplementary declarations and paperwork for goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework's green lane — effectively, it files the customs side of things on the trader's behalf so businesses don't need to run their own declarations. Over 66,000 businesses are registered for it, and on 22 September HMRC confirmed it's switching the whole thing to a new platform built by Netcompany.

The timeline runs in stages. A Trader Test service went live on 21 September purely for practice and familiarisation. From 1 October, current TSS users start receiving invitation emails with instructions on how to pre-enrol for the live platform. From 20 October, the old system stops accepting new movements entirely — not a soft cutover, a hard stop. HMRC has also been running a series of live webinars through September explaining the changes in more detail, with a final session on 30 September.

If you're registered for TSS, don't wait passively for the invitation email — check your spam folder once October arrives, and if nothing's turned up by the first week of the month, contact TSS support directly rather than assuming you'll be caught up automatically. A goods movement that can't be filed after 20 October is a goods movement that doesn't cross the border, so this is worth treating as a hard business deadline, not background admin. HMRC's own announcement, including how to register for the test platform, is on GOV.UK.

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4. The Steel Duty Exemption We've Been Watching Has Run Out

Quick recap of how we got here: from 1 July 2026, HMRC cut tariff-free steel quotas by roughly 60% against prior volumes, and introduced a 50% safeguard duty on anything imported above the country-specific quota allocation. Alongside that, a transitional exemption protected steel imported under contracts signed before 14 March 2026 — provided the importer could show evidence (the original contract, invoices, proof of payment) and declare it using document code 9Y16. That exemption expired on 30 September.

From 1 October, the exemption is simply gone. A contract signed back in January, arriving after 30 September and outside its quota allocation, now pays the full 50% duty regardless of when it was agreed. Quotas also reset on 1 October for the new quarterly period, which reopens balances on categories that had run down through September — worth checking current quota balances via the online trade tariff tool before you commit to shipment timing either side of the deadline, since quota allocation runs first-come-first-served per country, and some categories were already exhausted, and therefore already paying the 50% rate, well before the transitional exemption itself expired.

If you've still got steel shipments tied to a pre-14 March contract that haven't cleared yet, get your evidence together now rather than after HMRC asks for it post-clearance. Getting the commodity code right is central to knowing which quota category and duty rate actually applies to a given shipment — our Applying Commodity Codes and Classification of Goods course covers exactly this. The full measure, including what counts as valid evidence, is published on GOV.UK.