A single trade window (STW) is a digital platform, a one-stop shop, for submitting and exchanging data related to border clearance between government agencies, traders and other parties. Last week, the Financial Times reported that the government has shelved the UK’s Single Trade Window project after spending £110m on a contract with Deloitte and IBM to develop the platform.

The UK Single Trade Window cross-departmental project was part of the Border 2025 Strategy and was meant to “create a single gateway for all data from traders into government”. While the project hasn’t progressed since 2024, the 2025 Trade Strategy also confirmed that “it remains the government’s intention to deliver a single trade window”. Despite that, no money was allocated to the project in the recent budget.

A project riddled with complexity

Creating a comprehensive single trade window, one that connects multiple government agencies and stakeholders, and facilitates trade under various scenarios, is an ambitious project. The project faced many challenges, both during the initial design phase and after it was tendered to the private sector. Undoubtedly, also due to the level of complexity involved. The initial timeline suggested in the Border 2025 Strategy was frankly unrealistic. Once that became obvious, HMRC confirmed that the STW would be delivered in stages, with limited functionality available in the first instance.

The Single Trade Window was going to be a one-stop shop for traders, various government agencies and departments involved in border clearance. To do that, it would need to interact with many existing government and private-sector systems (e.g., port management systems, third-party software providers, etc.). For all different types of movements, declarations and transactions. Such a project would have to be clearly scoped and designed before proceeding to the build phase.

Is the UK Single Trade window really “shelved”?

There may not be any money in the budget for the STW at the moment, but the project itself is unlikely to stop. One reason is that developing such a platform is part of many countries’, including the UK’s, WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement commitments. More importantly, digital platforms are where trade is heading. Fragmentation, lack of data exchange between parties involved in cross-border movements and relying on physical paperwork and emails are not the optimal way to trade.

Many countries already operate an STW or are in the process of creating one. From the UK’s perspective, the EU’s new STW, the EU Data Hub proposed in 2023, is the one to watch.  The Data Hub is part of the EU Customs Reform and is meant to “replace the existing customs IT infrastructure in EU Member States, saving them up to €2 billion a year in operating costs”. The project not only needs to do what the UK one was meant to – it needs to do it for all Member States with their national IT systems.

There are some clear differences from the UK’s version. Unlike the UK, the EU has given itself a longer deadline. The Data Hub was proposed in 2023; the legislation is currently going through the trilogue process in Brussels and is likely to be adopted this year. The initial functionality is expected in 2028, and the full transition to the Data Hub by 2038. This gives more time to design and plan the platform. The Data hub is also part of a much wider structural reform, including establishing a new EU Customs Authority.

That is not to say that the EU single trade window project is without its own challenges. If recent history is an indication, the project is unlikely to be delivered on time and without issues. The UCC 2016 IT programme or the CBAM Registry come to mind. Nevertheless, the creation of an ambitious digital platform which will enable the transformation of customs declarations into “data events” is definitely something that will make it difficult for the UK to forget about its STW.

A word of caution

The term ‘single trade window’ means different things for different people. One example of that can be looking at the functionality of different countries’ STWs (for example, here).

It’s also worth remembering that an STW will not deliver frictionless trade. One reason is that challenges of cross-border trade go beyond submitting documentation and exchanging data. Another is that making a process digital doesn’t necessarily make it simpler. At least not automatically. The process itself needs to be reviewed and streamlined. A STW has the potential to simplify cross-border trade, but it doesn’t guarantee it. That would be the case only if it’s well designed, tested and so on. Finally, an STW covers only half of the border, which is why the next step of the work is interoperability of single trade windows (see Recommendation no 36 UN/CEFACT).

One key question for further development of the UK’s digital trade platform would be which documentation, requirement and services would be in scope. There will need to be a cutoff point as borders are getting more and more complex.

A bottom-up solution?  

Some have suggested that the UK’s STW should come from the private sector – as a bottom-up solution. Indeed, various private sector initiatives could offer a digital portal or framework for data exchange between government and private sector actors. But such initiatives would still need government involvement to ensure scalability and access to relevant systems. In addition, a private sector solution raises a number of questions regarding data confidentiality and ownership, commercial sensitivity, etc.

This option has a number of benefits. It’s a cost-effective solution. More importantly, however, using a solution designed and tested by the private sector would allow avoiding the most common pitfall of large, government-led customs IT projects – difficulties during the implementation phase resulting from the lack of sufficient involvement and feedback from the private sector during the design phase. Basically, not taking into account all possible scenarios and variables.

A private-sector-driven solution could also support the larger policy goals around digitalisation of trade. One of them being the piloting and delivery of digital trade corridors, which were also mentioned in the UK Trade Strategy.

While a private sector solution can be an alternative option to a government-built project, it would still need strong cross-departmental support. And a high degree of private-public collaboration.