With all the uncertainty about Brexit, it is important to keep up to date with the implications of a deal, or no deal, for your business.
Whilst it is impossible to predict what is going to happen, there are various sources of information that give a reasonable overview of the current/ known situation.
- The Government’s Brexit preparation adverts -interactive tool, gives tailored personal & professional guidance (easy to use, but a bit light. Still a good starting point). gov.uk/brexit
- The British Chambers of Commerce: https://www.britishchambers.org.uk/media/get/Business%20Brexit%20Checklist.pdf (v comprehensive checklist, also attached)
- The ICO has several resources dedicated to Brexit: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/data-protection-and-brexit/
- You can also enrol for the Government’s emails – currently most of the advice concludes with “this will be clarified in due course” but hopefully over time the advice will become more definitive
ICG member Muriel Esposito has conducted some research into the implications, and his conclusions are as follows (please check the situation for your business – these are Muriel’s own views and should not be taken as definitive advice):
- If you provide services only to the UK then you are not affected in terms of business operation but will still need to update any business policies that reference EU legislation
- If you are providing services to EU countries you are advised to read up on EACH COUNTRY’s take on how they plan to deal with the UK
- Contracts in place before the withdrawal date will be honoured as per current terms
- Bit of a grey area for new contracts post-withdrawal date. But in case of No Deal we all need to have special contractual clauses in place for data protection as well as reviewing what is the adequate jurisdiction in case of disagreement
- Data protection is a HUGE issue. UK will not restrict flow of info from UK to EEA, but the other way round requires additional clauses
- Unclear if professional indemnity and professional liability insurance will operate as per currently
- Local EU regulations could put restrictions on using UK (=3rd country) service providers to deliver a service elsewhere in EU in case of No Deal
- There is no financial support for SMEs for this – unlike in the rest of Europe
- The current arrangements for data transfers to and from servers outside the US are covered by arrangements with the EU and there are no separate arrangements in place between US and UK. This means that it may not be possible legally to use online survey facilities which are based in the US post-Brexit. For example, according to its website, a certain simian online survey company has its servers in the US, so it could be a problem for its UK users