AThe white elephants have gone, few will come for more than £25m. That’s the cost of the hi-tech border control post, built to government specifications to handle post-Brexit checks on goods entering the UK, which sits near the waterfront at Portsmouth international port.
The building has sat empty and unused for nearly a year since its completion, after the UK government announced in April last year that the introduction of post-Brexit import checks would be delayed for a fourth time.
Since then, ministers have revised their plans for how goods are inspected when they enter the country, with a full border strategy expected to be unveiled next month. Meanwhile, the local council faces an estimated £10m bill to cover its debts, maintenance and the cost of dealing with the new revised requirements.
“It’s disappointing,” said Mike Sellers, director of Portsmouth international port, surveying the echoing, empty rooms inside the massive, state-of-the-art structure. “Because we’re building to a design set by the government … So we’re doing what they’re asking, and we’re building it on time.”
Physical checks on fresh produce entering the UK from the EU and the rest of the world, including meat, plants and forest products, are expected to start on July 1 last year, after a set of posted deadlines.
But they were delayed again to April 2022 amid industry reports that the necessary infrastructure or technology was not ready. The former Brexit opportunities minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said at the time that it was wrong to impose the new checks at a time of a cost of living crisis, and risk further raising prices. to eat.
Since then, ports, traders and businesses have been waiting for the government’s new post-Brexit border strategy, known as the target operating model (TOM), which was originally expected last autumn.
The proposals were eventually published in April and the industry consultation window closed earlier this month. Under the plans, the UK’s import regime will be a much lighter touch and require far fewer physical checks on certain types of imports than previously thought.
Products coming from abroad that are subject to sanitary and phytosanitary controls – including imports of live animals, animal products, plants and plant products – will be ranked as low-, medium- or high- risk according to type and origin.
TOM proposed phasing in the import checks over three periods a year, starting this fall. From 31 October 2023, importers must have health certificates for medium-risk animal products, high-risk food, and high-risk feed that are not of EU animal origin, as well as phytosanitary certificates for medium-risk plant products from the block. .
Physical checks at the UK border will start on 31 January next year – when border control posts in places such as Portsmouth will finally start to operate, albeit carrying out fewer checks than originally expected – while safety and security declarations are also due from 31 October 2024.
Because of the proposed lighter-touch checks, the Portsmouth border post now looks overengineered, with much of what it has to offer potentially superfluous. It boasts 14 lorry bays and is designed to receive low- and high-risk goods entering the UK including meat, crops and forest products, and allow their inspection in air-lock quarantine zones to avoid the cross-contamination.
Building the facility at the UK’s second-busiest cross-Channel port cost £25m, of which it received £17.1m of taxpayer funding through the government’s oversubscribed port infrastructure fund, about half of its £32m application .
Despite the changes to reduce costs, the port’s owners, Portsmouth city council, had to take out loans to cover the shortfall, which Sellers said would cost the city’s taxpayers of £5.4m, and more to be paid. Running the lights and freezers last summer when the price of electricity was so high – which it was obliged to do, because it was liable for any defects in the first year of the building – cost approximately a further £500,000.
When the government outlines its latest post-Brexit border strategy, Sellers said the port would be able to build a much smaller facility, costing about a fifth of what it costs. Worse, it faces spending more to adapt the facility to new requirements – or even building a second one.
“There is still £5.4m owed to the council, if you like, plus what it would cost to make this facility suitable for the target operating model, or build an alternative, which could be another £4m or £5m,” he said.
“I think by the time we’ve finished it, my best guess is that we’ve spent the best part of £10m on some of the inspections that come into port, and we still have to recover that cost.”
Ports make money from charging importers for checks on goods. However, Sellers said they were not clear on what the benchmark price, as charged by the government-run border facilities, being built in places such as Dover and Holyhead where there is no room for a terminal checkpoint. The government’s proposals have not yet determined the cost, but it is predicted to be between £20 and £43 for each shipment.
Richard Ballantyne, chief executive of the British Ports Association, said: “Unfortunately, the TOM does not cover everything we need in the ports sector. This, at the very least, continues to fuel uncertainty and frustration, and, more seriously, threatens preparation timelines.
The reaction to the new border plan in the food sector was also mixed. While the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and some traders welcomed the proposals, others warned that the imposition of checks could lead to gaps on the shelves if exporters decide to skip the paperwork. and stop shipping products to Britain.
The NFU argues the lack of controls on goods entering Britain because Brexit is a “significant area of concern” for UK farmers and risks creating an uneven playing field. The EU is bringing in border inspections on UK products from the start of 2021, while EU exporters will have almost friction-free trade with Britain.
Shane Brennan, chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation, the trade body representing the refrigerated supply chain, believes that small EU food producers “will not be bothered by the paperwork” required in the future, and that many will stop at supply Britain all, leading. in temporary gaps on the shelves as seen earlier this year for fresh produce.
“EU businesses in northern Italy or rural Germany may not have thought much about Brexit in the last few years,” he said. “Now we have to tell the producers to do a load of compliance that they don’t do now. They are not exporters, and so far only serve one market.”
Brennan believes that the impact of post-Brexit assessments has not yet been felt in the UK, as the country is, for the most part, an importer of food rather than an exporter. He also warned that the increased cost and complexity of the proposed border checks could keep the annual inflation of food prices – already at a high level of 19%, according to official figures last week – even higher.
A Cabinet Office spokesman said the new border strategy “will provide protection from security and biosecurity threats, while preventing delays at the border by reducing the need for physical checks and by ensuring that inspections take place away from ports where they are needed. to allow traffic to pass freely”.
They added that the decision to remove the requirement for certificates or physical checks for many low-risk goods would help “save UK importers around £400m per year compared to the previously proposed model”.