You BETA hope its ready

SMART Freight is the IT system that is being designed to ensure trucks are carrying the correct documentation before they travel to ports. 

It is important because when the transition period ends shipments to and from the EU will require more documentation, and if this is not carried out smoothly, there will be confusion and delay at the border. 

Logistics UK says it has learned the system won’t be ready for 1 January 2021.

Logistics UK director of policy Elizabeth de Jong said: “News the BETA version is only anticipated for launch in mid-December is a crushing disappointment for the logistics sector.”

Logistics UK expressed dismay at the revelation the system will not be fully tested and stable until April 2021 – too late for the end of the EU transition period at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

But the Government told the BBC that BETA is a standard labelling practice for a digital service that is fully operational, and that it has reassured industry that Smart Freight will be operational by December.

That said, the actual definition of beta version is ‘a version of software that is made available for testing, typically by a limited number of users outside the company that is developing it, before its general release’.

Logistics UK remains concerned that ‘a BETA test is not the same as a fully ready system’.

“Businesses which will depend on the system to ensure the continued flow of goods and services to the EU were already working to very short deadlines if the SmartFreight system was to be tested and operational by the end of the year,” added de Jong.

“To find out, with only 14 weeks to go, that there will not be a ready, workable solution for those moving goods to the EU is a massive blow to UK businesses and the economy. The government needs to understand the complexity of the UK’s highly interconnected logistics industry and the amount of co-ordination required in order to use SMART Freight, and prioritise the allocation of more resource to deliver the system on time, to protect the UK’s supply chain.”