As with many other industries, chemicals are not really any closer to knowing the answers before March 29th.

UK government have published a draft of a Statutory Instrument to replace REACH (see here) but it is only a draft and it is still not clear when we will need it.  This could be on March 29th (in the event of no-deal BREXIT) or after a transition period if we agree a deal.

There is no sign yet of a public beta version for the UK's equivalent of REACH IT and time is running out for this to be ready in time for the end of March.

The EU also have yet to finalise guidance; for example ECHA promised to clarify practical steps for UK manufacturers to transfer registrations to an EU-27 OR (FAQ 1466) in January 2019 but this has yet to be done.

A challenging time for any chemical companies, and while we cannot promise you answers, we can provide guidance on options to the best of our ability so please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

Important information to help REACH contingency planning in the event of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit, the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has now been published on the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website.

These documents (the guidance itself and a summary table) can be accessed as follows:

Additional guidance

Scenario table

Amongst numerous clarifications, it now seems that if a UK-based EU REACH registrant wishes to maintain access to both the EU and UK markets after the 29^th March 2019, they will be able to transfer their REACH registration to an EU based entity beforehand where permitted (e.g. for Only Representatives). It will then be possible to have the registration ‘grandfathered’ in to UK REACH as long as the EU registration was held within 2 years prior to the Brexit date. In order to have the registration grandfathered into UK REACH, minimal information will need to be provided by the 29^th May 2019 (company identity, Registration number etc.) and detailed information including robust study summaries will need to be provided by the 29^th March 2021.

This action can ensure that market access can be maintained in both the UK and the EU after the 29^th March 2019 under the prescribed set of conditions.

At the 28th Meeting of Competent Authorities for REACH and CLP (CARACAL) in November, some provisional timings intended to help clarify for all actors under REACH how the duties concerning dossier updates as referred to in Article 22 of REACH i.e. clarifying "without undue delay" - some of these provisional timings are given below:

Early plans are to bring a proposal to the REACH Committee in February 2019 with a view to bringing it to a vote in April 2019.

The UK is leaving the European Union (probably) at the end of March 2019.  As a UK based company dealing with European chemicals regulations this clearly impacts some of the work we do and can have major implications for our clients.

For us the biggest impacts are for our Only Representative services and for our clients it will be the import/export relationship between the UK and the EU and what this means for current and future registrations.

We have more information on this BREXIT page and plan to add more over the coming weeks as well as continue our blog posts.  We hope it will be useful to you as we navigate the uncertainties that BREXIT has introduced.  If you want to talk anything through in more detail please feel free to contact us by phone or email and we will be happy to chat to you.