Dover travel delays: who is to blame?

theguardian.com:

Doug Bannister, CEO of the Port of Dover, blamed border control officials, Police aux Frontières, for failing to provide sufficient numbers to staff the passport booths.

The port boss said on Friday: “The cause of it is French immigration controls. We’ve been let down this morning despite the planning of the last several months to get ready for this day.”

He said there had been long-term planning for weeks for the summer holiday, which was expected to be the busiest day for two years. Only four of nine booths for the French border controls for travellers leaving the UK were reported to have been staffed on Friday morning, which port officials say led to the backlogs.

The prefect for the Hauts-de-France region, Georges-François Leclerc, said it was incorrect to say that the French had failed to mobilise sufficient border police, but some officials were delayed by an hour in arriving at their posts.

The episode has exposed wider capacity vulnerabilities at Dover.

There is some bemusement in France at the claim that approaching routes to Dover became gridlocked and a “critical incident” declared by the port because four or five passport control officials were late for work.

Pierre-Henri Dumont, the Calais MP, said delays were caused by Brexit and the requirement to stamp every passport. He said yesterday it was “fake news” to blame the French authorities. He also said Dover struggled to cope at peak demand.

Disruption at the port may get worse when new biometric checks are brought in as part of the new European Union entry/exit system (EES) for third party requirements. These may require people to leave their vehicles for biometric checks similar to those in place at airports. MPs warned the new checks at Dover could cause