Recent CHIEF outages have reinforced the importance of Electronic Fallback, and the necessity for all users to be familiar with how it works.

In the event of any prolonged outage of CHIEF, the CCS-UK system will be put into Electronic Fallback mode. This will permit forwarders and transit sheds operators to continue importing and exporting air cargo during the outage without interruption, but requires some special procedures.

Once CHIEF returns to normal operation, CCS-UK will be brought back out of Fallback mode and all information temporarily stored on CCS-UK will be released to the Customs system.

The procedures to be carried out by Forwarders and Transits Shed Operators are detailed in our guides which you can download here.