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We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy New Year, and to thank you for all your efforts in 2009 and as 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. The ELMS portal has been updated to include more specific implementation information for other Competent Authorities as opposed to Local Authorities. Please do have a look at the information available:
2. If you are intending to use your own electronic form, you are required to provide a deep link directly to the PSC. As such you will need to send us your website links via the Task 5 spreadsheet as soon as possible. If you are currently developing a form, you must also tell us the “go live” date. In addition, you are required to provide a link directly to the PSC. Information on how to do this is set out in the Website Toolkit Guidance document under Task 14 at:
http://elmsportal.businesslink.gov.uk/authority/tasks/16.
3. If you have chosen to use the BIS forms service and have not already begun the process of developing your new form, please do so immediately. Please be aware that:
If you choose to use this service, your form will be hosted on the PSC and you will use ELMS (Electronic Licence Management Service) to receive applications. For more information, please see the ELMS portal: http://elmsportal.businesslink.gov.uk that contains comprehensive advice and guidance on all the tasks you need to complete in order to link up to ELMS and the PSC.
If you would like BIS to create your electronic forms and have not already submitted a completed template, please contact elms@businesslink.gsi.gov.uk immediately. (Detailed guidance on this issue is available under Task 3 of the Task List on the ELMS portal.) In order to make this process easier and quicker, we will work with you to see whether you can use an existing form as the basis for the new form and/or whether you can use a form already created for a similar body, regulating similar or identical formalities that you can then amend to show your own details etc. Competent authority users of the forms service will also need to select a suitable Change of Circumstances form and put in place a process so that people without a UK bank account can renew a licence or otherwise pay remotely.
4. 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. Over the coming weeks, we will continue to provide support and guidance to assist you in implementing the Services Directive.
5. In order to help you and based on the queries received so far, we have compiled a list of known issues under the ELMS Solution Centre. This information is regularly updated and you should refer to this first before raising a query with the ELMS team as your query may already have an answer and/or already be known about and this will allow the support team to focus on remaining individual technical issues. The Solution Centre can be found at:
http://elmsportal.businesslink.gov.uk/page/elmssolutioncentre
6. We have also now devised a feedback form through which competent authorities may raise new issues and queries with the ELMS team. This is now available on the ELMS portal and will help us to prioritise your queries, focus on the most urgent and deal with them in the most effective way.
7. Task 5 & Task 8 information: an email was issued on 27th November 2009, this included the URL spreadsheet to be completed and returned as instructed (note: this spreadsheet will be reissued to those authorities that have not yet returned it or were not included in the original circulation list by Friday 5th February.)
8. If you intend to use ELMS and the BIS forms service, you should know that BIS is supporting four payment providers only i.e. Capita, Civica, Northgate and Worldpay. In order to link to ELMS, you will therefore need to have an account with one of these payment providers and, as it may take some time to complete this process, you should begin as soon as possible (if you have not already done so) in order to avoid any further delays in linking to the PSC. Please note that if you have chosen to use Worldpay, you must register with the Familiarisation Environment in order to test your payments.
Please see our guidance on implementing payments for further information:
If you have chosen to host your own electronic forms, you are still required to accept payment electronically, but you are welcome to use any payment provider of your choice. (Again, if you have not yet got a payment provider, you should get this process underway as soon as possible.)
9. You will need to confirm for each formality whether Tacit Authorisation applies or not and, if not, the justification for that decision. Whether Tacit Authorisation applies or not, you will still need to confirm the time period in which an application will be processed (this information has been collected via the email and spreadsheet that was issued on 27th November – see para 7 above and we will reissue that email and an updated spreadsheet in the next two weeks.)
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, including some 35 competent authorities, which 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. Contact the BIS IMI team at sdimi@bis.gsi.gov.uk
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