Who regulates plant health where
Plant health is a devolved matter, so the authority you deal with depends on where your business or your customer is. In England and Wales it is the Animal and Plant Health Agency's Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate, run from Sand Hutton near York. In Scotland it is the Scottish Government, with SASA at Roddinglaw Road in Edinburgh as the competent authority for nurseries, retailers and consignments landing at Scottish airports and ports. Northern Ireland is different again: under the Windsor Framework it applies EU plant health rules, administered by DAERA from Belfast. Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man each run their own desk. Running across all of Great Britain, the Forestry Commission regulates wood, isolated bark and wooden packaging, which matters to anyone who imports orchid bark, pallets or natural wood totems.
Who needs to issue UK Plant Passports
A UK Plant Passport is the label that lets plants for planting move within Great Britain and to the Crown Dependencies. Any business that supplies plants to other businesses, or sells by distance contract, must be registered as a professional operator and authorised to issue passports. Distance contract is the important part for small sellers: every plant sold through a website, by mail order, through a marketplace or over social media to a home grower needs a passport with Parts A to D on the pot or consignment. A shop that sells only in person to walk-in customers who will grow the plant themselves is exempt from issuing passports, but it must still keep the passports of the plants it buys in.
Registration with APHA through eDomero costs nothing. Authorisation to issue passports involves an inspection charged at £61.58 per 15 minutes, with a minimum visit fee of £123.16, and a £20.66 surcharge if you apply on paper. Authorised operators must keep traceability records for three years, which is what our free plant passport traceability register is laid out to help with. In Scotland the same job is done by SASA under Scottish fee regulations.
CITES sits on top of plant health
A phytosanitary certificate says a plant is free of pests. It says nothing about whether the species is protected. Many of the plants collectors want are listed under CITES, including all orchids, all cacti, succulent Euphorbia, Nepenthes and Cycas, and the listing applies even when the plant was propagated in a nursery. Before ordering from abroad, look up the exact binomial on Species+, the free database run by UNEP-WCMC. If it is listed, you need a UK import permit from the APHA Centre for International Trade in Bristol, currently £74, plus an export permit from the country of origin, and both must exist before the plant is dispatched. Applications are not refunded once processing starts, and a listed plant that arrives without permits is seized.
Northern Ireland and the islands
Because Northern Ireland follows EU plant health law, a GB seller cannot simply post a live plant to a BT postcode. The plant needs either an export phytosanitary certificate and CHED-PP clearance, or to move under the Northern Ireland Plant Health Label scheme by an operator authorised for it. Movements from Great Britain to Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man stay within the UK Plant Passport zone, but some host species need a passport carrying a pest-free area code, and each island has its own pre-notification rules. Check the island desk before ordering anything rooted.
Soil and growing media
Untreated soil and organic growing media from non-EU countries cannot enter Great Britain without a specified-material authorisation, and those authorisations are granted for scientific research, official testing, trials and breeding, not for collectors or retailers. This is why imported plants arrive bare-root and why compliant substrate is best bought from a UK formulator rather than shipped in from abroad.
When to call which desk
Ring the plant health line for your nation before you change how you sell, not after a consignment is held. A new online shop, a first wholesale order of passported stock or a plan to sell to Northern Ireland are all questions the inspectorate answers routinely, and the answer shapes how you label, record and dispatch. Keep the reference numbers they give you with your traceability records.