Call for Kent facilities to cut Brexit delays
More truck parking is now urgently required around Dover, reports suggest, as post-Brexit delays start to take their toll following the introduction of export controls at the start of the year.
Drivers who have been trapped in their cabs for more than four hours at a time lack toilet facilities and the results are causing upset to local residents along the A20 road.
Independent Dover town councillor Chris Precious has called for a new lorry park near Dover and a bypass for freight traffic.
Edwin Atema, from the Dutch FNV transport union, told the Independent newspaper that drivers were increasingly angry about queuing times at Dover since the implementation of full customs controls in January.
He said there was: “a lot of time not working, just waiting. Drivers are suffering from the lack of proper facilities. They have to s*** in the bushes. I’ve been there. You can see it, you can smell it. It’s 2022 and this should not be happening.”
Road Haulage Association policy director Rod McKenzie said: “The struggle to retain drivers is made more difficult by the shortage of infrastructure, the shortage of spaces to park, spaces to wash and spaces to go to the loo.
“We’re just asking for decent facilities of the type found in Europe.”
Roads minister Baroness Vere has reportedly instructed National Highways to assess landholdings to see if new sites can be identified, but it is acknowledged that new truckstop facilities will take years to build.
“If drivers are going to be held up more regularly, there needs to be appropriate infrastructure and facilities available,” said Adrian Jones, national officer for road transport at the Unite union. “It isn’t good enough at the moment.”
Meanwhile, a report by Parliament’s public accounts committee (PAC) has found that UK trade with the EU has been damaged by Brexit, but that the extent of the damage is difficult to quantify as a result of Covid-19’s impact.
Rather than alleviating the burdens faced by businesses, said the PAC, Brexit appeared only to have given companies more work to do. It also highlighted the risk of long border delays and truck queues once passenger numbers return to normal levels later in the year as anticipated, putting strain on the new border arrangements currently untested at pre-pandemic traffic levels. The committee highlighted the additional possibility that further port checks under the EU’s new entry and exit system could compound this.
The government’s stated aim of creating the most effective border in the world by 2025, the committee found, was “optimistic, given where things stand today.”
PAC chair Dame Meg Hillier said: “One of the great promises of Brexit was freeing British businesses to give them the headroom to maximise their productivity and contribution to the economy – even more desperately needed now on the long road to recovery from the pandemic.
“Yet the only detectable impact so far is increased costs, paperwork and border delays.
“The PAC has repeatedly reported on Brexit preparedness and at every step there have been delays to promised deadlines.
“It’s time the government was honest about the problems rather than overpromising.”
