Home Office Intelligence investigators have developed a new detection approach which should help Border Force to stop and seize a greater number of suspect freight consignments arriving at the UK border.
It combines information from the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) Compliance and Risk Engineering Solutions Team (CREST) with Companies House data, with the aim of increasing the rate of companies being referred for special inspection and the hit rate of those correctly identified as importing contraband.
Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE), the company asked to explore how technology could be used to help automate this process, found that by allowing intelligence officers to upload raw HMRC data and combining this with automated retrieval of Companies House data, the risk analysis process was reduced from around one week to minutes.
The aim was to expand the number of companies assessed and maximise insights to both increase the rate of companies being referred for special inspection and the hit rate of those correctly identified as importing contraband.
An operational trial identified hundreds of new companies for investigation out of which there were a number of successful stops.
Initial forecasting shows the tool has the potential to almost double the seizures of contraband from suspicious shipments over the coming months by increasing both volume and hit rate. The risk model, which presents results immediately, scores companies on their likelihood of being an importer of contraband according to 11 weighted rules.
