As many as 20,000 coach passengers hoping to sail from the UK’s leading port to Calais and Dunkirk this weekend have endured extremely long waits at Dover – in some cases up to 18 hours – before departing by ferry to France.
The delays coincided with the start of the Easter holidays for many schools, which brought a surge of coaches to the Kent port.
The Port of Dover declared a critical incident and says it has been “working round the clock with the ferry operators and border agencies to get coach passengers on their way, with extra sailings being put on overnight to help clear the backlog”.
There is no longer a backlog of cars and trucks, but the statement from the port added: “There remain pockets of coaches still waiting to be processed, with smaller volumes of coaches expected today.”
Coaches are being directed to the Cruise Terminal initially, where they will face a wait of four or five hours. At 2pm on Sunday, the Port of Dover said: “Border processing time for coaches is around four hours, once entering the port.”
The leading ferry operator, DFDS, said port staff were “still working through the backlog of coach traffic, but numbers arriving today are reducing so they hope to be in a better position later today”.
Some 300 coaches departed from Dover on Saturday, with 140 more expected to sail on ferries on Sunday.
By Monday, it is likely that the backlog will be cleared.
What caused the problems?
Poor weather and delayed ferries on Friday and Saturday may have had a marginal effect, but according to the boss of the Port of Dover, the main issue has been passport control in France.
For the past 20 years, management of the border with France has been “juxtaposed”, with Police aux Frontieres (France’s Border Force) officers stationed in Dover and Folkestone, and UK Border Force staff in Calais and Dunkirk.
Until 2021, there was a “light touch” approach, with many vehicles simply waved through. Even if the French officer did look, the only formality for British citizens was a simple verification check: “Is this a valid EU travel document, and is this the holder?”
But the UK signed up for a hard European Union border to be installed with our nearest continental neighbour – like the borders the EU has with Russia and Turkey.
Every UK passport holder – and these make up…
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