After thousands of families heading for France endured long delays over the weekend, concern is growing that congestion at Dover and Folkestone could continue through the summer.
At the start of the busiest holiday weekend since 2019, queues began to build at the port of Dover on Friday. As the weekend went on gridlock spread to the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone.
So what caused the chaos in Kent – and will it continue during the week and into the future? These are the key questions and answers.
Before they can travel across to France, motorists and truck drivers must clear the “juxtaposed” French border at Dover or Folkestone – which means formalities are completed on UK soil, with no frontier on arrival in France. But the formalities mean queues can build up.
More smoothly at both Dover and Folkestone, but there is still some catching up to do – many holidaymakers yesterday encountered long delays and some decided to stay overnight in Kent. The backlog has to be cleared swiftly because there is an awful lot of freight traffic that needs to get across to France.
No one quite knew how the busiest weekend for outbound travel since 2019 – and Brexit – would play out. The expected rush last year didn’t materialise because at very short notice, just before the usual great getaway the UK government brought in mandatory quarantine for returning holidaymakers from France. So the new post-Brexit rules have simply not been tested at scale before.
I see no evidence of that. These organisations are single-minded about process – acting as conveyor belts, one at Dover, one at Folkestone, to get people, cars, buses and trucks from the UK to Continental Europe as swiftly and smoothly as possible.
They prepared forecasts on how many vehicles and people were expected, and set up systems to cope. “We’ve been planning for the summer season for months,” I was told by Doug Bannister, chief executive of the Port of Dover.
The first sign that things were seriously awry was a statement put out by the Port of Dover at 7.30am on Friday morning. As the big weekend rush began on Friday, the port warned that holidays could be ruined because of “woefully inadequate” staffing by French border officials, the Police aux Frontières.
The authority declared a “critical incident”. Mr Bannister said that the failure to deploy enough staff early in the day meant queues began to build swiftly.
Meanwhile a serious accident on the M20, the main approach to both Folkestone and Dover, closed the motorway. Drivers tried to find alternative routes and soon every usable route was gridlocked.
As Friday wore on, families heading for the continent on holiday found themselves stuck in cars for many hours. Local residents struggled to make their way through the congestion that built up during the day.
By Saturday the French passport booths at Dover were fully staffed, but by then the backlog added extra pressure. Traffic in the area of the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone built up and holidaymakers were unwittingly stuck in interminable queues – with no facilities, food or water.
Not according to the Conservative leadership contenders, who both called the delays “unacceptable”. They blame the French.
The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, who hopes to be prime minister within six weeks, said: “We need action from France to build up capacity at the border to limit any further disruption for British tourists and to ensure this appalling situation is avoided in future.”
Her rival Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, told the French “to stop blaming Brexit and start getting the staff required to match demand”.
But observations of cars at the border checks by The Independent indicated a typical time of 90 seconds for a family of four in a car to have their documents checked.
With an average of 3.5 people in each vehicle, that means a typical wait of 80 seconds – probably three times longer than before the post-Brexit rules took effect.
In the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK government asked for British travellers to be treated as “third country nationals”. Previously French border officers could check only that the passport was valid and that it belonged to the individual.
