Lareon Posted June 24, 2022 Report Posted June 24, 2022 What Can Be Imported The UK law on the import of curved blades saw a number of changes over the last few years, initially banned in the 2019 offensive weapons act, a provision was made to allow certain curved blades to be imported. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-offensive-weapons-act-2019/statutory-guidance-offensive-weapons-act-2019-accessible-version Above is a link to the 2019 offensive weapons act. Swords are covered in the offensive weapons section The law states the following defences existing under section 141 of the criminal justice act 1988 apply to the simple possession of a weapon any of the following: 1. of historical importance 2. to be used for Historical re-enactments 3. to be used for sporting activities 4. to be used in film or theatre 5. possessed on behalf of a museum or gallery or to be lent to such body for cultural educational or artistic purposes 6. religious reasons Exemptions: 1. Antique weapons over 100 years old are exempted from section 141 2. there is an exemption for curved blades 50cm or longer made before 1954 3. there is an exemption for curved blades 50cm or longer made by traditional methods in any time period. Most likely as a pure collector you will not meet any of the defences of section 141 but you will most likely meet the exemptions. Who Can Import Anyone may import items that are legal in the UK I would highly recommend being affiliated with a membership body like the To-ken society, not just for the sake of importing but for the knowledge and help they provide. Having communicated with them on some of my rarer items they have been a great help in putting me in touch with relevant people and the membership cost is low compared to the expertise you will receive in advice. https://to-ken.uk/ How Do I Import To import into the UK can be slightly tricky if you have never done it before. I have imported many items, mostly from America and didn't have any issues...until I did. 1. Your items need to be packed well. Not just for the protection of the items but by law any sharp blades or items need to be well packaged to ensure that the delivery company will not be harmed in delivery 2. Choosing the right Courier. Many people have their own preferences and the list of who will carry a sword is ever shrinking, At the time of writing 24/06/2022 I have used UPS, DHL, Parcelforce, EMS, Fedex before choosing your courier please do extra research as some of these say they will not ship a blade and obviously times change and they may have changed policy when you read this. 3. Documentation. Here is a big one, Documentation is key. I enjoy buying gunto that maybe have no pictures or very few pictures and with an eye for the fittings being of significant quality that the blade inside will be good. I then like to share the unboxings with the community. This means i tend to buy a lot of swords that have no documentation. who has documentation on their guntos? there's not many. How do you import these items? well you're legally allowed to import a sword made traditionally or before 1954 so you have to prove this with documentation For more expensive purchases you most likely will have your documentation from shinsa or from a reputable seller who knows what they are doing. This is going to be a lot easier. a. Get the seller to write a letter stating the sword is traditionally made or made before a certain date. b. If you have the date on the nakago, translate it and include this in your documents package. c. You have the smith's name on the nakago? translate it and include history on this smith. What will most likely not be accepted as evidence a. photos of similar items, including references from books. I referenced gunto fittings in one of my seizure cases but it was rejected as it was not relating exactly to the item i was appealing, even though the Gunto fittings showed it to be of a certain era. b. A sworn statement by yourself. your word can not be accepted as proof c. pictures and evidence of things that require in depth knowledge this one is tricky, remember the people you are dealing with know nothing about swords, they don't know patina, or what a Hamon is, they don't know what the nakago symbols may mean on a Gunto and they don't know what a smith's signature means or signifies. Shipping labels This one has been an issue for me, even with all the evidence included in my shipment in the document folder, the shipping label has caused issues. I've used many companies before to pick up, pack and ship my items, They are lazy when it comes to the label. "Auction merchandise" "Swords" These are not good enough. Even with all your evidence it is critical that the label produced by the shipping company is correct. 70cm sword is not good enough 70cm sword made in 1320 by Masamune in Shirisaya with sayagaki by Tanobe San of the blah blah blah is much much better Get your shipping labels correct! Import Tariff Codes The tariff codes changed in January 2022 so a google search may find some outdated information. https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/headings/9706 Ive included here a link to the tariff lookup service set to 9706 that at the time of writing is the code for antiques. Antiques over 100 years old https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/commodities/9706900000 antiques over 250 years old https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/commodities/9706100000 For both of these items the tax rate at the time of writing is 5% Include the following to make sure you do not pay 20% tax VAT footnote 03001 5% tax rate applicable obviously if your sword is not over 100 years old then you will not be able to use these import tariffs legally. These are quite simple and should not cause any issues Delivery Once the items have been shipped they will pass through customs in the country of origin then they will hit the UK This is the critical point where a number of things will happen. 1. the item will go to either the domestic courier or will be shipped by the original shipping company. 2. The items will go into Customs, this can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of weeks, to even sometimes over a month at the worst. 3. the items will most likely now have their import fees added on to them and you will get a notification to pay this. Check that the import fees are correct and are using the 5% rate. The shipping companies are very lazy and will just auto add the 20% I always have to call up and point out it's 5% not 20% 4. The item will be released and shipped and hopefully arrive 4b. The item will be seized Seizure I will be writing this next section based on my own experiences of two separate seizures that occured around the same time. For me the first i knew that my items had been seized was the police arrived at my door. I didn't expect this and since i'd never had issues before (quite a few imports) I didn't think that It would happen so i guess i got a little complacent. if you wish to read about it, You can see the progression of the issue here the police gave me a handout and told me that keeping swords were illegal etc etc. you can read about it above Seizure Steps 1. Initial Seizure Notice The first seizure notice i received was handed to me in person by the police The second seizure notice i received was in the post ( I guess the police didn't see the need to come again) the Seizure notice comes as a letter and a booklet the booklet describes what to do any how to go about appealing if you wish to The letter states the reason for the seizure and a description of the items seized. Be aware this is the last time you will receive a communication from borderforce, they will not reply to emails and you may contact them for 1 hour a day on their phone line. This is fairly pointless as the people on the phone have no knowledge of the case and cannot help in any way except to maybe to acknowledge receipt of information but I don't recommend calling as it achieves nothing. 2. Challenge to seizure the next step is to decide if you wish to have your items back. If you don't, you can stop reading here, if you do then you will need to do the following. There are two avenues to proceed from here 1. Challenge the legality of the seizure 2. Ask for restoration of the items. myself personally i did both but in both cases when the items were returned to me i dropped the appeal on legality of seizure. i will explain later in the article why that is and what made me come to that decision. So you can achieve both of these goals in one letter, there are templates supplied by borderforce on how to write it but any letter will do and i recommend writing your own. you need to do the following 1. describe the items 2. Describe why the items are legal to import 3. confirm you own the items 4. include a paid invoice for the items showing you have bought them 5. include any extra information proving why the items are legal to import. documentation is key here. I know this can be difficult if you have already provided everything earlier. 6. Say whether you wish to challenge the legality of the seizure, ask for restoration or both. Do not lose your temper and be professional at all times. It is very very frustrating and it will get more so as the process goes on. you can write to borderforce or you can email them. Both of these options will be provided in the documentation you received from seizure. Initially I posted everything and printed it out, but it got expensive and i realised that email was fine. (I didn't realise this at first and thought I had to post it) there will now be 1 or two processes running at the same time 1. court case 2. restoration procedure Borderforce will ask you a few steps along the way if you wish to keep challenging the legality and they will warn you that they will charge you court costs if you lose the case. Both times my items were released to me before the court cases could start so I pulled out of them. I will not be going through the court proceedings as I've not experienced it for the court proceedings the following will happen 1. you will provide your information 2. you will be entered into a queue for a court date, this will be around 7 months wait, may be less, may be more 3. you will be given a letter or email just before they apply for this asking you if you wish to continue. 4. they will notify you on the date they are about to submit the proceedings to court , so you have time to pull out if you wish for restoration the following will happen 1. you will provide your information 2. you will await a decision by borderforce on restoration ( this took 4 months in both cases) 3. you will most likely be denied restoration 4. you will be given the choice to appeal (you should) 5. you will then for the first time be able to speak to someone who has any form of power, a high officer. 6. the high officer will communicate with you directly and you can give any extra evidence that may be lacking or was highlighted in your denied restoration. 7. the high officer will give you the result of the appeal 8. if you are successful you will receive your items back - for a fee 9 if you are not you will be able to apply for a tribunal - documents will be provided (I haven't ever gone this far so I can't write anything about it) a little information about point 3 above. from conversations with borderforce themselves they advised me that most likely I will have my restoration denied, before it even happened. this was on the phone with them. They stated that the restoration is done by someone who has no real power and just looks over what happened and if the items were seized for any good reason (being a sword) then it would be upheld. I was told to then appeal and that would be the place where someone with decision making power would weigh up the options. you're looking at a few months so you might as well make a cup of tea and await the first rejection then move onto appeal. I found the high officer to be good to deal with and I can't really fault them at all. They are sensible in their approach. The steps before I found highly frustrating and bordering ridiculous but I have to keep reminding myself, the borderforce have far less knowledge than any of us on the items, they do not have expert knowledge at all. Key Information This was one of my biggest mistakes in the process, I didn't realise I was dealing with people that knew zero about Japanese swords. I assumed since they were the ones restricting them and managing the import of them they would have some knowledge. This is not the case and you have to tailor your documents to this, I provided a lot of information to border force to the point, that they commented on how much I had supplied. Simply because I did not know what they wanted. They will not tell you what was the exact reason for seizure even if requested, they will not provide you with any information and they will not understand many things. you have to explain everything as if to a novice. It is a good test of your own knowledge though. Appeal When you reach appeal your life will get easier, up until this point you're talking to a brick wall. if you are missing anything they will ask for it (you have to have provided a solid foundation for your information though) I had to provide 1. to-ken membership 2. Date i joined 3. communications with to-ken members to prove activity 4. images of the hamon 5. images of the nakago 6. I showed that provinces didn't exist anymore in Japan and what dates they had changed name 7. I provided images from books to show fittings. (wasn't helpful in the end) 8 i provided letters from the seller and letters from experts on the items (mixed results) 9 I provided background information on the smiths when possible and when it wasn't possible i tried to provide other information to age and clarify traditional methods of manufacture 10. I provided invoices and bank statements showing i purchased the items. Both of my appeals were successful in the end as i had clearly proven the items were legal to import. It just took a long time to get this far. I was given the option at this stage to cancel the challenge to legality and i did in both cases. Why did I cancel my legal challenge? Initially i was very upset at the way i was treated and the police coming to my house etc etc. In communication with the high officer though I received the following information I would again respectfully point out that any sword with a curved blade over 50cm in length can legally be seized at import by BF, and that the sword would remain seized until BF was satisfied that the strict criteria for a permitted defence had been attained and proven. This would seem to me that any sword can be legally seized until they are satisfied with the result. I'm not sure how i would stand in court challenging this if this is the case. Since i am not a lawyer and didn't seek legal council on the matter i can't be sure. I'll leave that fight to someone else Good luck all and hopefully if you're ever in this situation this information will help Cheers! 1 Quote
Yann81 Posted June 24, 2022 Report Posted June 24, 2022 hello do you know if there is some restrictions too for the exportation ? or it depend of the country destination . best regards yann Quote
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