Not quite sure the rest of the world is convinced.
californianewstimes.com/regional-ports-fear-unfair-brexit-advantage-for-channel-rivals/643074/
The government plans to introduce Brexit post-EU customs inspections later this year, at risk of compromising the commercial “fair competition” of UK provincial ports.
Charles Hammond, chair of the UK Major Ports Group, which includes 40 large ports, said government funding for customs parks risks unfairly distorting the market in favor of ports in the English Channel that serve “short straits.”
The inland area will be used to carry out physical inspections of imports from the EU, scheduled to begin in July.
Hammond’s intervention was made because the government promised to announce a billing structure for inland border facilities, including the main site in Sevington, Kent. This sets a benchmark for charges imposed by other UK ports.
The government has promised £ 470 million in post-Brexit port infrastructure, of which £ 200 million will be distributed to 41 ports in the UK through the Port Infrastructure Fund to build border inspection facilities needed for new customs management.
However, the Dover Port and the Channel Tunnel site in Folkestone lacked physical space on the site, so there was no need to build border infrastructure.
Instead, trucks arriving at these “roll-on, roll-off” channel ports are sent inland for inspection at other UK government-operated sites such as Sevington and Dover White Cliffs. Hammond argued that this would provide a potentially unfair advantage over the ports that funded their own infrastructure.
“Government knows that operating costs need to be recovered, so we need to come up with a pricing model that creates a fair competition,” Hammond said. He insisted that he needed to find a way. ..