French police blame Dover port for border delays

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By Marc Ashdown and Katy AustinBBC News

April 7, 2023

French border police have accused the port of Dover of failing to properly prepare for the holiday rush last weekend, when many travelers faced long delays.

Some schoolboy coaches waited 14 hours to pass border control and board ferries to France.

A French border control spokesman said each cabin was occupied “continuously”.

The person said the problems were “on the UK side”.

“Based on the weekend forecast, the French border police had taken the necessary measures to deal with this flow,” said a spokesperson for the French national police communications team.

“This was not enough to absorb the number of buses announced for one day, due to the structural organization of the control queues at the port of Dover, British side”, they added.

The spokesman said the number of buses police had been told would pass through Dover on the weekend of April 1-2 was ‘mathematically impossible for checkpoints to absorb’ and they had alerted the management of the port of Dover “several times during the week about the foreseeable difficulties”.

“The Port of Dover management therefore knew in advance that the flow would be a problem,” they added.

The French border police had “mobilized all of its staff” to cope with the crowds, said the person concerned.

“100% of the cabins were permanently armed and allowed the opening of all lines of light vehicles, heavy goods vehicles and buses throughout the weekend.

“The French general staff ensured that the checks were carried out in a pragmatic and efficient manner. An additional deployment of personnel would not have improved the system, as there were no additional cabins to arm,” said said the spokesperson.

Port of Dover chief executive Doug Bannister earlier told the BBC that new measures had been introduced to manage the flow, and he was confident he could cope with peak times in the future.

Asked whether extra passport checks due to Brexit had contributed to the delays, Mr Bannister added: “There is no doubt that border transit is taking longer now, no doubt about that, since we left the EU.

“But as an example, last summer when car traffic was increasing, we installed new infrastructure there and worked with the French border authorities to manage this – and apart from the first day of summer when resources were really light, the rest of the summer it worked really well.”

The French national police also criticized the “lack of equipment” in Dover compared to Calais.

There are 22 checkpoints at the port of Calais, 10 of which are dedicated to bus passengers. In Dover, however, they said there were only 13, 3 of which were dedicated to buses.

The spokesperson added: “The port of Dover also suffers from a lack of facilities, particularly in the context of Brexit (which transformed the Franco-British border into the external border of the European Union), with the obligation of border guards to date- stamp passports.

“This lack of equipment, particularly for bus control, considerably limits the ability to absorb traffic. On the other hand, the port of Calais on the French side has seen a marked improvement in its infrastructure over the same period.”

The Port of Dover was approached to comment on the reviews.

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