John Habergham, Myton Law, Hull U.K.
The British International Freight Association (BIFA) Standard Trading Conditions for 2025 are now published and being used.
The great majority of forwarders in the UK are members of BIFA and it follows that the great majority of business is transacted under their auspices. They are important.
It seems to me that many of the changes are driven by the increasing volume of customs work that BIFA members are providing.
This has made its way into a significant change with regard to the time bar.
It has been a recent complaint, subject to litigation before courts, by customers, that due to the time bar, claims by the customs authority, HMRC, made against the customer typically arose after the 9 month time bar – the effect was that the claim by the customer against the BIFA member for recourse was, effectively, still born at birth.
The 9 month time bar now only applies to “cargo” claims.
As for the rest, the customer has 6 months from, for example, any demand by HMRC, to bring a recourse claim against the forwarder.
The prevalence of customs works has made its way into clause 7, the capacity in which the forwarder acts for the customer – the default position is acting in a direct capacity (ie in the name of the customer), alternatively, if permissible by law, as an indirect agent (ie in the forwarders own name )but, in any event, there is discretion to subcontract.
It also has an impact on clause 18 (an important clause, which, in my experience, is often relied upon by any forwarder and that is the warranty given by the customer) – it now extends to the customs commodity codes of the goods, any provision of assistance by the forwarder to the customer with regard to the completion of customs declarations etc and the correct value of any goods being imported or exported (clause 18(H) – which is new).
There are welcome additions into the warranties given by the customer in particular that the customer is allowed to use postponed VAT accounting (PVA); and with regard to sanctions – this affects all international trade and logistics nowadays and is only going to increase. Sanctions seem to be the governments of the Western world’s weapon of choice.
The limitation regime is broadly similar – the limits have been retained but the aggregate limit has been revised to make it clear that the relevant period is a calendar year which starts on the date that the first breach occurs.
The previous version contained a reference to “any one trading year” and the litigation that arose out of this was – “Who’s trading here – the customer or the forwarder?”
Although the lien clause has been amended to make it clear that it applies wherever the goods may be located, I think a trick has been missed in not dealing with the prevalence of electronic trade documents.
The lien extends to documents. If it is an electronic document, where is it at any one time? The revision says they can be anywhere but I think it might have been prudent to have a default position that for the purposes of the lien, that place will be deemed to be the place of domicile of the forwarder.
The revision doesn’t take into account about the forwarder’s access to the electronic document which will be by way of a key. No doubt this could be the subject of a separate bespoke agreement between the forwarder and the customer.