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We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy New Year, thank you for all your efforts in 2009 and look forward to reaping the benefits of the EU Services Directive in the UK.
On Sunday 27th December 2009, not only did the Provision of Services Regulations 2009 become UK law, but BIS is also pleased to confirm that the business facing element of the UK's Point of Single Contact on www.businesslink.gov.uk went live.
This includes the UKWelcomes site for non UK-based business users as well as the underlying Transaction facilities i.e. the www.ukwelcomes.businesslink.gov.uk link is now live.
1. Following system “go-live” on 28th December, BIS is now prioritising its support on those authorities that have already deployed or are in the process of actively deploying their formalities i.e. have now reached task 17 & 18, before they connect to ELMS. If you have not yet reached this stage, it is important that you continue to work your way through the Task List so that you are able to connect to ELMS and fulfil your legal obligations as soon as possible.
2. In order to manage the demands on the elms support team more effectively, we will allocate each authority a specific time slot when the support team will be available to provide support (if needed). Please note that this does not mean that you should stop progressing through the task list until then. The elms support team will contact you in the time slot allocated, check that you have no outstanding issues and that you are able to connect to ELMS.
The anticipated time slots available are: 22nd January, 29th January, 8th February, 22nd February, 1st March, 15th March and 22nd March.
In order to help us manage this process, it would be helpful if you would indicate which slot you would prefer, which we will confirm with you. Please send your preferred date to servicesdirective@bis.gsi.gov.uk by Thursday 14th January.
3. By concentrating our technical support team’s efforts in this way we think we will be better able to help you all achieve compliance with the regulations as quickly as possible.
You can of course progress ahead of your allocated slot and link to ELMS although if you are unable to resolve any issues or problems through: the ELMS solution centre, FAQs, existing guidance or peer support from the community of practice, the support team will not be in a position to address anything other than generic advice.
The following section on “On-going Support” explains the new process for raising issues/queries etc that will be in place as from Tuesday 12th January.
4. Over the coming weeks, we will provide support and guidance to assist you in implementation of the Services Directive, and are aware that the majority of you are working hard to meet your authority’s obligations and communicating with us regularly. As such, in the last few weeks we have received such a high volume of enquiries to the elms@businesslink.gsi.gov.uk inbox that we have been unable to respond as quickly as we would have liked. We apologise for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience.
5. In order to resolve this situation, we have now devised a form through which Local Authorities may raise issues and queries with the ELMS team. This will be available on the ELMS portal from Tuesday 12th January and will help us to prioritise your queries, focus on the most urgent and deal with them in the most effective way.
6. In addition, based on the queries received so far, we have compiled a list of “Common Queries and Solutions” which is now available on the ELMS portal and will be updated regularly.
We would ask that you please consult this list first before contacting the ELMS team, as your query may be easily resolved and/or already known about and this will allow the support team to then focus on remaining individual technical issues.
Hopefully, this system will enable us to support you through the implementation process more effectively.
8. Please could all local authorities who informed BIS of their intention to amend their local legislation or administrative rules and practices please let BIS know via servicesdirective@bis.gsi.gov.uk when this was done. If the required amendments have not yet been made, please do so as soon as possible and inform BIS of the date they were made.
We are aware of the following proposed amendments by local authorities, please check if you have any such requirements that need to be amended and, if necessary, amend them and let BIS know. Amendments to:
7. The Tacit Consent value is drawn from your answers to email 3 (as part of Task 8), which listed formalities and proposed defaults. Therefore, please check that your authority has replied to email 3, and that you have only edited the relevant parts of the spreadsheet as instructed.
If your authority has not yet returned your spreadsheet response to email 3, please note that it will take up to two weeks to process and for these formalities to be displayed in your list. If you have not received email 3, please check your email security filter. The email may have been picked by your security policies as it contains an attachment and words that might possibly have triggered a quarantine.
Please note that, if Tacit Consent is set to yes and you have put a 0 value in the Target Processing Period field this will mean that the Tacit Consent period is immediate – it does NOT mean that Tacit Consent does not apply.
(Further information on Tacit Authorisation is available on the Community of Practice which also has information on postal/non-electronic applications.)
9. Whilst the Businesslink.gov system is brought up to date with your local regimes, there may be instances whereby a local business sets up, which should have first received authorisation from the local authority. Where the business can show that it had good reason to believe prior authorisation was not required, BIS would recommend that authorities give the business an opportunity to comply with the local requirement without disturbing its operation.
This is in line with the Government's Response to the Anderson Review on guidance to business although we recognise that this approach will not always be appropriate, for example, where issues of public safety are concerned.
10. Many thanks to all who have registered and used the IMI system during the pilot phase. We have now moved into the 'live' phase of the system which enables 'real' requests to be sent and received. The UK currently has over 250 registered authorities who are ready to send and receive 'real' requests for information to authorities in other Member States. The feedback that we have received so far has been very positive and valuable for us in informing the Commission of the changes that we would like to see in future versions of the system.
If your authority has not yet registered for the IMI system, it's not too late! Registration is ongoing and we have kept open a facility that enables authorities to continue to send test 'fictional' requests. We would recommend that ALL authorities take advantage of this opportunity whilst the test function is still available. This is a fantastic opportunity to use the system whilst there is no danger of making mistakes.
For further information about the IMI system please see the BIS IMI webpage or the European Commission IMI website: http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/imi-net/index_en.html. Alternatively, please contact the BIS IMI team at sdimi@bis.gsi.gov.uk
