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Transit accompanying documents

A Transit Accompanying Document (TAD) is required for each NCTS transit declaration.

Note: Although safety and security (S&S) data elements can be provided in an IE015 message and a Transit Security Accompanying Document (TSAD) can be printed for a UK transit departure, safety and security declarations (SSDs) must be completed separately. This means that you cannot use a TSAD to fulfil your UK entry summary declaration (ENS) and exit summary declaration (EXS) requirements.

TADs must be created by using information only from IE029 messages.

TADs are electronically authenticated by the NCTS, so they do not need to be authenticated by the Office of Departure (OoDep) by stamp. A Common Transit (CT) movement cannot be released from transit legally until after the relevant IE029 message has been generated by Customs and a valid TAD has been created.

Note: A TAD should be created using only data that has been validated or provided by the NCTS. This can be achieved by generating the TAD directly from the IE029 message either electronically or through printing it manually, or by using data from the relevant IE029 message to update a previously created and validated transit record, and then creating the TAD from that.

Traders using the NCTS normal procedure will have the option either to collect the TAD from the OoDep or to generate the TAD at their own premises. Approval to create the TAD is granted by the Central Community Transit Office (CCTO), to which a trader’s application must be submitted for consideration. Traders must provide evidence of their ability to create TADs in the required format.

Traders authorised to use NCTS simplified procedures as Authorised Consignors can generate their own TADs as part of their authorisation permission.

Fallback procedure

For information about the TAD fallback procedure, see section ‘Business continuity: ‘Unscheduled’ Downtime’ of the Transit Manual Supplement.

Manually printing TADs

Guidelines for printing TADs are available in this zip file

The following printing guidelines are important:

  • the ‘liability amount‘ information in the guarantee data group is not printed on a TAD
  • the printer and print driver used for printing a TAD must be capable of printing a bar code of standard ISO code 128 set B (but not EAN128)
  • use the font type BC C128 Narrow (True Type) version 2.0

Example TADs

  • the TAD/TLoI Template is available here

  • the TAD Correlation Data spreadsheet is available here

  • the example TAD(PDF) generated from the example IE029 message(XML).