The UK expanded its open general export licences on October 14, adding 12 destinations to a dual-use licence and widening two routes for military goods, software and technology. The Export Control Joint Unit announced the changes in Notice to Exporters 2026/23, saying the changes could remove the need for more than 800 low-risk individual licence applications a year.

The dual-use additions are Bahrain, Botswana, Brunei, Jordan, Kuwait, Mauritius, Morocco, North Macedonia, Oman, the Philippines, Qatar and Seychelles. The announcement covers industries including aerospace and information technology. Its administrative estimate is a government projection, not a count of applications already avoided.

Destination coverage comes with exclusions

The October dual-use licence sets out both the destination list and the controlled items it permits. It also carries a country-specific exclusions table. All 12 newly named destinations have additional excluded control entries, so inclusion in the list does not give every controlled product access to the simplified route. Exporters still need to match their item's classification against the instrument.

The licence also restricts exports where the exporter has been told, or knows, of specified prohibited end uses. It excludes most exports into customs free zones, with an exception for technology sent by telephone, fax or other electronic media. Registration through SPIRE is required before first use. Existing registrations carry forward to later versions, according to the explanatory note, while records must be retained for at least four years from the end of the calendar year concerned.

The separate government or NATO end-use licence, dated October 14, is organised around the ultimate user. Its destination list includes Brunei, Chile, Jordan, Kuwait, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Oman. A contractor can receive eligible items under this route only with documents confirming that they are needed by an eligible government or NATO organisation. The licence gives purchase orders, contract extracts and written undertakings as examples of that evidence.

That distinction matters for suppliers working through intermediaries: the contractor's location alone does not establish the qualifying end use. This instrument also prohibits transfers into customs free zones and restricts incorporation into goods or technology destined for countries outside its permitted list. It retains separate written-approval requirements for security-classified material. A broader country list therefore does not remove the need to check the customer and onward destination.

Commercial users and registration checks

The broader military goods, software and technology licence, also dated October 14, permits any end-user in its main destination group. That group includes South Korea and Switzerland, alongside European destinations such as Poland, Portugal, Romania, Greece and the Baltic states. A second group has narrower government or NATO end-use provisions and requires re-export through destinations in the main group. Those two groups should not be read as interchangeable commercial permissions.

The broader instrument excludes complete military vehicles, complete vessels and complete aircraft from the relevant listed categories. It also excludes complete unmanned aerial vehicles and components specially designed or modified for them. Exporters cannot assume that a licence covering defence components also covers the finished platform. Its conditions provide for registration to lapse after 24 months without a qualifying export, although an exporter can register again.

For the administrative steps, the government's SPIRE guidance, updated in April, says applicants need their export-control classification and supporting technical documentation. They must identify whether the goods are being exported from Great Britain or Northern Ireland because the licensing requirements differ. The guidance describes open general licences as reusable authorisations for regular exports, each with specified activities, items and destinations.

Where an item or destination is absent, or a condition cannot be met, the guidance directs exporters towards an individual licence. It also requires a fresh registration when the UK premises holding records for inspection change. The same guidance says officials may audit licence holders to check compliance. Exporters must keep the required records and include the licence or SPIRE registration reference on shipping documents as instructed. These are continuing compliance requirements, separate from the October expansion. For wider trade context, Dalimss News has covered India-UK trade-deal monitoring and the WTO's goods-trade forecast.