Updated Tuesday 28 April 2026
HMRC have announced upcoming downtime for the CDS service:
"Due to scheduled maintenance the Customs Declaration Service (CDS) will be unavailable to all users from 9:30 pm until 11 pm on Wednesday 29th April 2026.
Declarations should not be submitted during the outage period.
Creating, updating, or embarking a goods movement reference (GMR) during this time might be affected.
Only goods with pre-lodged declarations attached to a GMR will be allowed to move using Goods Vehicle Movement Service (GVMS).
For guidance on GVMS, read GVMS Service Availability and Issues.
For import movements using GVMS, you should check the declaration status and arrive where needed Manually Arrive your Goods in the UK.
If moving consignments containing controlled goods with pre-lodged declarations, read the List of Goods Imported into Great Britain from the EU that are Controlled and attend port inspection facilities or inland border facilities for goods to be inspected and released.
Exports should have Permission to Progress (P2P) before travelling.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause."
Additionally, HMRC have advised:
"There will be a CDS system outage to deploy a hotfix on the evening of 29th April 2026 between 21:30 and 23:00. Once the system has been restored following this outage, CDS Release 5.1.0.2 will be deployed. There has been no change to the contents of this release and there will be no additional system downtime while the Release 5.1.0.2 changes are deployed.
In addition, on the 11th May 2026, the changes relating to excise duty that were delivered as part of CDS Release 5.1.0 on the 29th March 2026 will be added to the Online Tariff and should be used from this date. These changes were items 15 and 16 of the Release 5.1.0 guidance document, which I have re-attached to this email for reference."
The referenced documents can be found here:
Release 5.1.0.2 Guidance for traders
Release 5.1.0 Guidance for traders
Posted on Monday 27th April 2026