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The current complications caused by the new customs and plant health controls are making shipments to Northern Ireland impractical.
We have sought clarification from the Animal and Plant Health Authority (APHA) department within DEFRA who have advised that shipments of plants to Northern Ireland are now subject to full phytosanitary controls, involving the costly inspections and certification which is done on each individual consignment. Given the exorbitant fees charged by the APHA to complete the necessary documentation we are unable to absorb or subsidise the costs and we feel it unreasonable to subject customers to these hefty charges.
The current fees (taken from the Gov.uk website on 07-02-2021, and subject to change at their whim) are:
There are fees for plant health services delivered by APHA in England and Wales you must pay for.
The fees are £63.80, with a minimum fee of £127.60.
The fees are payable for each 15 minutes (or part thereof) spent in carrying out the inspection and any associated activities. Associated activities include the time it takes inspectors to travel to your site and any administration relevant to that inspection, subject to the minimum fees.
An additional fee of £15.76 is charged if you submit an application for an export in paper form rather than online using eDomero.
It is our hope that these fees will be reconsidered at some point by APHA with a more reasonable approach to Northern Ireland in respect of plant health. If the current charges and restrictions continue we intend to review the practicality of collating several orders for inspection at the same time, thus spreading the inspection costs between several orders and keeping the costs as minimal as possible per order.
In any case, for the foreseeable, we have disabled shipping for all BT postcodes.
We wish to offer all our customers in Northern Ireland our sincere apologies for the way the UK government and the EU have complicated things.