Brexit bicycle accident bamboozles Brooks
A famous manufacturer of traditional leather bicycle saddles, Brooks England, has uncovered an accidental extra trade conundrum as a result of the UK’s departure from the European Union (EU).
Brexit became a reality at the start of 2020, but a transition period until December 31 meant most trading arrangements between UK companies and the 27 remaining EU states stayed in place last year.
At the start of 2021, Brooks England, which manufacturers its saddles in Smethwick, near Birmingham, announced that it was suspending all new online orders from customers in one particular market, the UK.
“We continue to produce each leather saddle in our West Midlands factory in more or less the same manner as we have for over 150 years,” the company said in a statement. “However, upon their completion, these saddles are shipped first to our logistics centre and from there to cyclists around the world.”
In September 2020, Brooks England became part of the Selle Royal group, which has its headquarters and, crucially, its logistics centre, in Italy. In the statement, Brooks England asked its UK customers to be patient while it continues to “analyse the situation and plan proper administrative steps”.
According to the Financial Times, the confusion has arisen because, at the end of the transition period, the UK government decided that companies shipping online purchases from outside the country to customers in the UK must register to pay UK value added tax and pass those tax revenues to the authorities in London. However, it quoted a tax consultant, Richard Asquith, as saying that the UK tax authorities were taking about two months to process these registrations.
The newspaper said the rule changes were causing “chaos in e-commerce”, which may have put the team at Brooks England in mind of a quote from George Bernard Shaw. Shaw once claimed that the trouble with newspapers was their apparent inability to distinguish between the collapse of civilisation and a bicycle accident.
Image: A Brooks England B17 saddle in honey-coloured veg-tanned leather.
