Border Services and Customs Agencies Editing and Proofreading Services

Border agencies write for people who are tired, often anxious, frequently reading in a second or third language, and in no position to ask follow-up questions. A traveller handed a notice at secondary inspection has minutes to understand what has happened, what will happen next, and what they can do about it. The same agency also writes officer notes and detention records that may be examined years later by a tribunal or a court, where the question will be whether the officer's reasons were recorded at the time and whether they were adequate.

We edit what border and customs agencies produce — traveller-facing notices for examination, seizure and detention, penalty and administrative monetary penalty notices, appeal and review rights explanations, officer procedure manuals and desk instructions, notes and narrative reporting standards, customs tariff and classification guidance for importers, valuation and origin rulings, trusted trader and pre-clearance programme documentation, commercial release and reporting requirements, immigration examination and admissibility material, detention and removal documentation, public information for travellers and importers, and memoranda of understanding with other agencies. Our editors check that a notice tells its recipient what to do next, and that procedural guidance leaves officers in no doubt about what must be recorded.

The seizure notice is the document where these two audiences collide, and it is usually written for neither. A traveller whose goods have been taken receives a form citing statutory provisions, a tariff classification and a penalty level, without a plain statement of what was found, why it was not allowed, what happens to the item now, and how to contest the decision. We rewrite these so the first lines say what was seized and the reason in ordinary words, so the amount payable and the deadline are unmissable, so the review route is described as a sequence with its time limit and its cost, and so the consequence of doing nothing is stated. We keep the statutory citations, because they are necessary, and stop them from being the only content. A notice written this way reduces both the volume of unmeritorious appeals and the number of meritorious ones that are never made because the traveller could not tell they had a right to make them.

Everything you send is treated in strict confidence, including operational procedures, case material and documents in draft. We are editors rather than legal advisers and offer no view on classification, admissibility or the exercise of any statutory power. What we can do is make your public notices comprehensible and your internal guidance unambiguous, and we work regularly with agencies producing material in more than one official language.