Port of Dover Critical Incident

[AndreaC74]

Why are we blaming the french? they didn't vote for Brexit and aren't responsible for increasing/paying for extra capacity at the French border posts on UK soil.

Stamping passports is what happens to 3rd country nationals & that adds time, a lot of it, when dealing with 100s of '000s of passengers, plus having recently been to France, i ve seen UK people arguing with French officials because they don't want their passports stamped!

The UK seems incapable of organising anything at the moment, the numbers travelling across the channel is entirely predictable and delays we are now seeing were talked about pre 2016, i remember seeing the graphs on how long the queues would be for just a few seconds of delay for each passenger.... all Project Fear.

@notimagain The additional checks are thanks to brexit of course, the incompetence and intransigence is all french of course 😂

But they're not... they didn't turn up for work 😂😂😂

The FT has the story that the Port of Dover asked for £33million from the Govt to prevent or reduce what we are seeing by increasing the numbers of booths for the French officials. The Govt refused. This was back in 2020.

It's behind a paywall but the report was Dec. 2020

@Pedallleur don't confuse poor old @bluegardenflowers with actual facts! This shambles has to be the fault of the French because otherwise their precious Brexit has turned to shit.

Sophie Pedder
@PedderSophie
·
5h
In 2020 the UK government refused a request from the Port of Dover for £33.5m to double the capacity for French passport staff. This was in anticipation of the need under Brexit for tighter border checks

Ciaran the euro courier @ vanmaneuro

Last night on the M20

2x lanes of 15 miles of trucks

Miles of cars trying to get into the train - it was gridlocked

You literally can’t leave the U.K. .

But

Blame the French

Ye sit is up to france to staff if they want the holiday makers / tourists which they do
Its the same in europe at airports etc all struggling for staff or is that brexit fault as well

@Pedallleur but why would we pay them to staff their side ?
People just won't travel in future to places that can't handle the numbers
Passport control is needed in many many countries and queus are not that long
I have just been to canary islands , passports stamped and in and out of airport in 30
Mins , they have their shit together and have staffed airports accordingly as they want the tourists

I voted remain but im sick of seeing people thinking that then gives them the right go call people who voted brexit thick or such like , get over yourselves you are not superior ,

So many of the "I voted remain but" bots on this thread. It really is quite hilarious!

"I voted remain but"

Yeah right...

I've said it before, I'd love to hire the project manager for "Project Fear". Everything has come in far earlier than expected! Admittedly, it has cost 10 times as much, but that's not really down to him...

worriedatthistime
"why would we pay them to staff their side"

Why should the French have to pay for extra resources just because the British (Little England) voted for complete insanity?

FWIW You can get through our local French airport having arrived on a flight from the UK in under 30 minutes most days, even with the enhanced passport checks, so I'd suggest generally the French border police (PAF) have

but why would we pay them to staff their side ?

The request was to pay for the required infrastructure in Dover, not to pay the French staff.
Anyone who regularly travels through Dover will know that there is very little space available for expansion, and very little space available to queue cars and lorries.

Prior to Brexit, leaving Dover involved waving your passport at the French officials, who more often than not just waved the car through and just did random checks. Now, because the UK is a third country and British passport holders entering Schengen have to meet a number of strict criteria (e.g. can only be in Schengen 90 days out of 180) every passport has to be checked and stamped. In my experience this takes around 5-7 minutes per car whereas before even when stopped by the French passport control, it only took a minute.

So the maths are simple. If it previously took one minute per car, and now takes 5 minutes, the French passport authorities need five times the number of staff. Which they are not going to be able to provide because a) they don't have that number of staff available and b) even if they did, there are not sufficient facilities (booths, offices, queuing areas for cars etc) for them to use. Add in the time taken for random checks for Customs - there are now strict limits on what can be carried from the UK into the EU - and the problem is even greater. And this is only the car traffic. The time required to clear commercial vans and trucks has increased 10-fold since Brexit.

And next year it will get worse, as UK citizens will require a ETIAS Visa Waiver in order to enter Schengen. This too will need to be checked, and I bet that there will be hundreds of people who reach the front of the queue only to find that they haven't got their ETIAS sorted out.

(How odd, not sure what happened there, only part of the post appeared)...

.....got their "shit together".

If the problems continue at Dover it's being caused by factors specific to that port.

Port of Dover built 4 extra booths, from 8 to 12, thats a 50% increase but it is also not enough to avoid extensive delays, thats from the head of the Port of Dover.

The french say a issue with the tunnel stopped them all getting to work, denied by EuroTunnel, Sky News say the additional workers got caught up in traffic delays... not denied.

These booths were only built late last week, wouldn't it have been better to have have had them staffed and in use before Saturday morning?

Bottom line is without Brexit, none of this would have happened.

Peter Foster

Succinct. Dover tell me the processing time at border has gone from avg 58sec/car pre Brexit to 90s/car post #brexit. Multiply that up and you get 🤔🤔🤔…longer queues (even when all French Staff do show up).
twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1551107969361879040?t=MKuTz42l-Z2yxdu0BVhYrg&s=19

"The french border police just hadn't turned up for work to man them. End of"

Love the way Brexiteers are so sure they know the complete in and outs of a situation they very often end their statements with "End of ". As though they are trying to shut any differing opinion down.

How about you were warned of this and dismised it as Project Fear . It's Brexit. End of.

FWIW French TV (BFM, so not state TV) ran a report this last night.

Their POV...:

As far as the initial problems on Friday they are pretty much sticking with the sort of statements that have been put out by the likes of the local Prefet a couple of days back - planned manning levels had taken into the travel rush but no denial that the problems of Friday started because of the late arrival of personnel.

Into Saturday and the ongoing delays were not down to personnel not turning up, it was down the enhanced passport/customs checks and the facilities in place to perform them.

Those factors are very much down to the decision the UK made to leave the EU which made Dover an entry point at the external EU border.

Observation made by at least one political wonk that some of the comments coming out of the UK, and especially a statement made by one politician, have to be seen in the context of an domestic election process....

Incredible!

UK has had to cancel (%) more flights than any other european country... and yes Brexit has to shoulder its fair share of blame as its now harder to get people from other european countries where there are higher numbers of workers available.
Hence why the UK has had to introduce worker visa's for butchers, fruit pickers, care workers and food processing.

Yes i'm sure handling a few 100 people off an aeroplane is exactly the same as dealing with 10k cars and 4000 lorries all travelling through a small english town, heading towards 12 booths ......

...and you wonder why Brexitiers are often called thick.

Larry the Cat knows

A story in five parts:

1. The warning

twitter.com/Number10cat/status/1550940342614212611?t=G0lH_-EhUffbpCL2IMUA2A&s=19

"End of"

It's not the "end of" of anything. This will only get worse when biometric tests etc are introduced.