Suffolk Coastal Port Health Authority

Issue Number 01| February 2015|

www.porthealth.eu

Port Health Update – Charges for catch certificate checks
A comprehensive review of IUU charges has been undertaken.  As a result, there will be an increase in our charges from the 31 March 2015.

The last review and revision of the charges was in 2011, since then the checks have become more detailed and the level of information recorded has increased.  This means that it is costing us more to carry out the checks.  Port Health does not receive any funding to carry out the checks, so charges have to be increased to a level to ensure that service delivery costs are recovered.

The new charges will apply to consignments arriving on vessels berthing after midnight on 31 March 2015.

Charges applicable from 31 March 2015

The following charges will be applied on a per country basis:

For low risk consignments £22.50 per flag state country.

Imports coming directly from the following flag states are currently defined as low risk:-

  • EEA/EFTA country (Norway, Iceland, Faroe Islands)
  • country with a bilateral agreement with the EU for IUU purposes (USA, Canada, New Zealand), e.g. fish caught by a US fishing vessel and processed in a US approved establishment.

For high risk consignments £45 per flag state country.

The following imports are currently defined as high risk:-

  • fish caught by other third country fishing vessel
  • fish from EU/bilateral/EEA/EFTA countries that have been processed in a third country (indirectly imported), e.g. fish caught by a US fishing vessel and processed in a Vietnamese approved establishment

Due to the additional work in checking documents from more than one country and checking and handling multiple documents additional charges have been introduced. The appropriate checking fee of £22.50 or £45 is applied for each country that certification is received from. In addition where multiple certificates are submitted to accompany a consignment a sliding scale of charges will be applied as follows:-

Number of Certificates Charge per High Risk country Charge per low Risk country
1-5  £45  £22.50
 6-10  £67.50  £39
 11-20  £78.75  £51
 21+  £90  £62

The number of certificates are counted per country to reflect the amount of work incurred in checking the certification.

Intervention charges

Charges for consignments requiring verification / movement control intervention or non-conforming consignments have increased considerably. These now accurately reflect the amount of additional work required to be undertaken for such consignments.

  • Formal verification/ movement control notices = £90
  • Non-compliant IUU consignments = £90
Process Review – and changes from 13th January 2015

Before making an increase in the charge, we examined and modified the way that we carry out the checks to see if we could make things more efficient – whilst still complying with the law.  We have made some changes which have allowed us to keep the processing costs per job lower and reflect a fairer way of charging based on the amount of work required.

Results of verificationsCopies of the catch documents which we have verified are no longer being returned to the forwarding agent/ importer.  We have replaced this with a summary document detailing the outcome of our check(s) and the reference number(s) of the relevant catch certificates.

Flow of work
We have also made some changes to the document processing procedure in order to reduce the time taken to start the documentary check, eliminate issues with part compliant loads; and reflect a change in the information we are required to recording by the Marine Management Organisation on behalf of the European Commission.

As a result, you will notice that where there are distinct sets of IUU documentation submitted for a consignment (particularly where this pairs with a CVED), this will be processed and charged separately.

See Examples below for more details.

Calculating IUU Charges – Examples

Process changes that were introduced on 13th January 2015 (ALVS implementation date) have altered the charges we are making for some consignments. Old document handling process = one IUU Job per container New document handling process = separate jobs for catch certificates/processing statements that relate to a specific health certificate (product and weight match) (note: an IUU processing statement can also be called an ‘Annex IV’ or ‘Article 14(2)’)

Example 1: One Container with 3 CVEDs and 3 Catch Certificates all from the same country

Under the old process we would have raised one IUU job with one charge (currently £40 for high risk country; £20 for a low risk country)

Under the new process we will check if the catch certificates are specific to each CVED. If so, we will create a separate job for each catch certificate. Each job will have a separate charge. In this example that will be a total of 3 x £40 rather than 1 x £40.

Example 2: One container with 2 CVEDs and 2 Processing Statements

Under the old process we would have raised one IUU job with one charge (currently £40 for high risk country; £20 for a low risk country)

Under the new process we will check if the processing statements are specific to each CVED. If so, we will create a separate job for each processing statement. Each job will have a separate charge which will be dependent on the number of catch certificates accompanying the processing statement and the countries that issued those catch certificates.

Example 3: One container with 1 CVED and 7 original Catch Certificates all from the same country

Process remains unchanged – one IUU job created and current charge of £60 for a high risk country or £35 for a low risk country is applied.

Further Information

If you want to find out more about the Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing Regulations and the checks that are carried out on catch certificates please visit Import Process – IUU.