Importing back to Heathrow - PITA - Customs

[Old Git Ray]

This is part of my shipping report previously posted. It could be useful for Brits coming home.........



I collected my bike from Heathrow on Monday 10/02/2014. What a bloody nightmare. Having traveled all of North America, all of Central America and a good part of South America, I finally arrive at a bureaucratic nightmare in my own country.

All the other countries were an hour or less admin with most of that being queuing up.

Heathrow - and sadly most of the UK it appears, is a PITA. The problem is that there is no customs post at Heathrow. The busiest airport in the world has no customs post !! They shut it down not long ago. The customs office for Heathrow is in Manchester.

I like to do my own customs stuff when I can, and expected to turn up, do the paperwork and take my bike home.

I went to BA cargo and they were surprised that I did not want/have an agent to do the paperwork for me. Apparently that is the norm now. The cost of this was another £60 approx, on top of the £55 that BA wanted to deliver the bike from storage.

BA were extremely helpful. They supplied all the relevant phone numbers and faxing services.

In the end, I filled in a Form C21, available from the customs web site, faxed it to Manchester and waited. Luckily they took pity on me as I was sat at Heathrow with my trailer and they processed it in a couple of hours. But the normal time frame is around 12 hours.

For anyone interested, the paperwork needed was as follows:

...1) The Form C21. 3 Pages of which only 2 are used (but all faxed).
....... Box 30 needs 'GBLHR' as a country code. (for Heathrow)
....... Box 37 needs '000 041'
....... Box 40 needs 'Z-ZZZ-(then AWB number)'
...2) The Air Way Bill into the UK
...3) the Air Way Bill out of the UK. (Probably not mandatory but helpful)
...4) The UK registration document.
...5) A list on plain paper of items imported. Something like this:
..... Items imported into the UK by (Name) on flight (???) on Date (date)
..... 1) 1 Yamaha Motorcycle (Model), (Reg), (Vin)
..... 2) 2 Helmets
..... 3) 2 Motorcycle jackets
..... 4) etc...etc....
..... Under this I wrote: "These items are all UK VAT paid and were purchased in the UK prior to traveling abroad." It was then signed and dated.

[chris]

Welcome home! You've been away too long seeing how it can be done. Back here in Blighty you/we all get fuct from ar$seh0le to breakfast time.

Many thanks for the shipping info. Very useful to know.