Duty free allowance

After taking wine and goodies back to the UK from france for 20yrs and not thinking about it, I am suddenly confused after Brexit, what it means! We are due to go home by ferry to the Uk next week after a 5 week stay in holiday home.
Can I still buy (within the new allowance) from the supermarket and take that through or has it got to be only from ‘onboard duty free shopping’.
Realise not thought about it before!
Also assuming the allowance is per person and not per car?!
Apols if asking a daft question here!

Yes you can buy stuff from the supermarket.

The allowances are more than they used to be - now

42 litres of beer and 18 litres of wine plus

4 litre of spirits and other liquors over 22% alcohol, OR
9 litres of fortified/sparkling wine or other alcoholic drinks up to 22%

If you are a smoker then you can bring up to 200 cigs, 100 cigarillos, 50 cigars, 250g tobacco (these can’t be combined but you can bring eg 100 cigs and 125g of baccy).

You can also bring up to £390 of other goods.

You can also take Brie and tins of confit de canard.

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Based on this Sally I think you can bring in whatever you like…

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Thank you…and so with 2 of us in the car…it could be double that? Not that we will this time but for future reference.
There are two things I wa t to get ‘through’ A huge old terracotta pot that I got at an emmaus for €30 but looks like an antique…isn’t.
Also a slightly damaged but lovely white marble washstand top…also emmaus €20!
No receipts…unsure if kind ofthing would draw attention in with 2 suitcases! Or maybe I am.just getting paranoid!

Yes :slightly_smiling_face:

Yes, the allowances are per person.

But you can’t bring one item worth £780 even if there are two of you.

!!! Oh ok then.

Unless you saw it in half :grin:

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You could try, I suppose, but you’d have to present two receipts I suspect.

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We went back at the beginning of September for our son’s wedding, for which we were supplying the wines. Two of us in the car, we took our maximum allowance of 4 full cases of wine and 2 of champagne - 60 bottles in total, and ordered a little more than that to be delivered tax paid in the UK. In the event, nobody even asked us what we had in the car and we could easily have taken it all back with us but you never know that.

I think pretty much anything goes at the moment, TBH, and the customs officials have bigger fish to fry, but of course anything you do that is outside the limits is at your own risk. We took cheeses and a huge case of tomatoes gifted by our neighbours.

Coming back, same thing. No-one seemed to care and I could have stuffed our electric coolbox with cheese and sausages if I had wanted. I don’t expect any of this to last, but for now it doesn’t seem to be an issue - our friends brought an entire bathroom suite out from the UK in their trailer for their house here and again not even a question.

So I think your vase and washstand is not a problem.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that you won’t catch them on a bad day and they dismantle your vehicle on the quayside! Just very unlikely. (It is within their powers)
Because 5 years was not long enough to put in place preparations for inspecting goods coming into the UK and the planned introduction date has moved from Oct 1 to “sometime later” there are effectively no checks whatever on goods entering the UK for the foreseable future. They may challenge your car and your contents but to be sure of getting it in - take a truckload!
Coming back to France is a whole different kettle of fish. The Douane have a lot more work now and who is there for them to take out their resentment on?