BCMS cattle records are one of the areas UK livestock farmers most consistently fail on inspection. Roughly 50% of farms inspected have had cattle identification or movement recording failures. Most are not failing because they moved the animals incorrectly — they are failing because the paperwork was late, incomplete, or not retained long enough. This article covers what the law requires, what the penalties are, and what is changing with the LIS transition in 2026.
The British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) maintains the Cattle Tracing System (CTS), the database through which cattle births, deaths, and movements are tracked across the UK. The legal requirements are not complicated, but they are strict.
Every keeper of cattle must maintain a holding register recording all cattle on the holding. This is a legal requirement, not optional record-keeping. The register must include:
The register must be available for inspection on request. It can be kept on paper or on a computer. If kept digitally, it must be printable. Records must be kept for 10 years from the end of the calendar year of the last entry, or 3 years for animals no longer on the holding.
Beyond the on-farm register, cattle keepers must report cattle births, deaths, and movements to BCMS within 3 days. There are four ways to do this: postal movement cards, the CTS Self-Service telephone line (for up to 50 movements per call), CTS Online (the web interface), and third-party software via CTS Web Services. Livestock management software that integrates directly with CTS Web Services automates these reports, removing the risk of forgetting the 3-day deadline after a busy day of moving cattle.
Every bovine animal must have a cattle passport issued by BCMS. When an animal dies, the passport must be returned to BCMS. This is where many farmers trip up: passports not returned after death trigger penalties. Historically, failure to return passports correctly has resulted in a 3% cut to the Single Farm Payment. Under ELMS, the equivalent penalties apply to SFI and Countryside Stewardship claims.
Livestock movement recording failures are a criminal offence. In practice, enforcement is primarily through subsidy payment reductions rather than criminal prosecution for most farms, but the possibility of prosecution exists.
The financial penalties are real: passport errors and movement reporting failures can cost 3% of the total Single Farm Payment (or equivalent ELMS payment). On a large livestock farm, that is a significant sum. The EA and APHA field officers who carry out livestock inspections can take legal action for problems found, and a court conviction for movement recording offences can result in a fine of up to £5,000 per animal.
If you discover that a movement was incorrectly reported, BCMS must be contacted immediately to amend the record. Errors corrected promptly attract less severe consequences than errors discovered at inspection.
The Cattle Tracing System (BCMS/CTS) is being replaced by the new Livestock Information Service (LIS) during 2026. This is a significant change to the infrastructure of UK livestock recording, even if the legal requirements themselves do not change immediately.
LIS entered private testing in December 2025 and public testing in spring 2026, with a phased rollout to all cattle keepers throughout 2026. It replaces not just BCMS but also the Scotland-specific ScotEID and other regional databases with a unified platform. The aim is improved interoperability between livestock data and wider farm and veterinary records.
If you are using livestock management software that integrates with CTS/BCMS, your software provider will need to update that integration to connect to LIS. Check with your provider that they are on track with LIS integration before the system goes fully live. Herdwatch has confirmed LIS compatibility. Other platforms should be asked directly.
DEFRA has announced that all cattle born in England after a set date in 2027 will be required to carry electronic identification (EID), using low-frequency (LF) technology. This mirrors what already applies to sheep and is intended to support faster and more accurate movement recording and biosecurity tracing.
For livestock farmers, this means that from 2027 any new cattle will need EID tags rather than or in addition to conventional ear tags. For software, it means that systems need to be able to read and record EID data from handheld or fixed readers and feed it directly into movement reporting without manual re-entry of ear tag numbers.
If you are choosing livestock management software now, confirm whether the platform is building EID integration into its 2026 and 2027 roadmap. Systems that have not addressed this will create a manual data entry problem at the point when the volume of EID-tagged animals starts to grow.
Bovine TB testing requirements vary by region and area risk classification. In England, the frequency ranges from annual testing in low-risk areas to 6-monthly testing in higher-risk and intensive action areas. Wales requires annual testing throughout.
The record-keeping obligation for TB testing is specific: results of TB tests must be kept for 3 years and 60 days from the date of the test injection. These records must be produced on request from the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) or an inspector. For farms that have experienced TB breakdowns and are managing herds with restricted movement or under interferon gamma (IFN-gamma) voluntary testing protocols, additional records are required.
TB testing records need to include:
Livestock software that holds TB test history against individual animals — rather than in a separate spreadsheet or paper folder — makes retrieval significantly faster at inspection and reduces the risk of losing records over the multi-year retention period.
Combining the BCMS compliance, LIS transition, EID preparation, and TB record requirements, the minimum that a useful livestock management system needs to deliver:
Herdwatch covers most of this and integrates with BCMS/CTS and ScotEID. For farms that need livestock records alongside crop management and SFI compliance in a single system, the options narrow quickly and a bespoke system may be the most practical route to avoiding the manual reconciliation between platforms.