Holidaymakers were told to expect lines for the rest of the summer as resentful French officials still ‘furious’ over Brexit were blamed for delays of up to 30 hours at Dover and Folkestone over the weekend.
With cross-channel infrastructure on a “knife edge” because travel numbers are back to pre-pandemic levels and more border checks, border chiefs from both sides of the Channel are expected to meet on Monday to discuss how to avoid similar lines ahead of the busiest travel weekend of the year from this Friday.
A verbal spat has broken out between London and Paris over the chaos at passport control that has delayed the start of the British summer vacation.
Jeremy Hunt, a former foreign secretary, claimed today that France is punishing Britain for Brexit and harbours resentment toward Boris Johnson for carrying it out.
He claims that by stamping the passports of each traveller utilising ships from Dover and the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone, the French are being overly official.
Returning fire
With Brexit, the UK has gone back 30 years, according to François Decoster, vice president of the Haute-de-France region, which contains Calais.
He proposed the UK approach the EU to allow them to rejoin Schengen, the agreement that permits free movement of people on the continent.
The main issue, according to Mr. Hunt, is that the French government is unwilling to cooperate with Britain in any manner because they are upset about Brexit, angry with Boris, and believe we have derailed their long-term strategy for a united Europe.
And I’m hoping that when we get a new prime minister, we can start over with France and the EU and work together as neighbours should.
Families remained detained in their cars overnight in Folkestone lineups on Saturday due to delays ranging from 21 to 30 hours, which has been dubbed Britain’s “hotspot of vacation horror.”
While desperate travellers were compelled to use the edge as a public restroom, children changed into their pyjamas and brushed their teeth on the side of the road.
The disaster started on Friday morning when a “serious incident” at Dover was declared, forcing drivers to wait more than seven hours.
After only six out of 12 stations were initially staffed, the two days of traffic jams at the beginning of the busiest school holiday season in years were attributed to a paucity of French border guards.
Although there is still a “serious incident” today, there are significantly fewer lines at the ports this morning.
However, there were issues with Eurostar services, and customers complained that flights to Paris were cancelled with only 90 minutes’ notice.
Retaliating, Mr. Decoster said that the destruction was caused by the UK quitting the EU and proposed that the British government think about rejoining Schengen, a suggestion that will enrage British ministers.
“Brexit implies we must implement new controls,” he said. I felt terrible for the families since we want to welcome British visitors and want them to have an easy time visiting our stunning locations.
Why don’t we investigate this proposal because we have a few Schengen participants who are not EU members?
The regional police commander will meet with the head of British border control, according to the French source, in order to “prevent the same issue next weekend.”
He declared, “This cannot happen again since next weekend will be the busiest weekend of the year.
Yesterday’s scenes brought back memories of the day I had to cross the border between Romania and Hungary in 1992.
Before these nations joined the EU, thirty years ago. I believe that these photographs are from an earlier era in Europe and do not belong today.
I don’t know if you have to stamp the passport, but I’m sorry we have to use passports once more, he continued. It is necessary to get rid of this.
“This is not development,” I said. Progress is being resisted by this. We do not want this for Europe.
We want to be able to move freely. Unfortunately, there needs to be tighter control [between France and Britain].
While French officials attributed the delays to increased procedures brought on by Brexit, British officials accused France of failing to staff the border adequately.
There are growing lines at the Port of Dover due to concerns that Kent may experience more severe disruption during the summer.
Ferry operator DFDS advised customers to allow “at least 120 minutes before your departure to complete all procedures” since there were “queues of around an hour” for French border checks on Monday morning.
“The queues have gathered up and it is taking about an hour to clear passport control,” P&O Ferries stated on Twitter.
At the beginning of the school summer break, hundreds of families’ travels were hampered by bumper-to-bumper traffic, forcing passengers to wait for several hours.
Staffing issues at the French border checkpoint and a significant accident on the M20 freeway were given credit for this.
The existing lines at the Port of Dover, according to Toby Howe, senior roads manager at Kent County Council and tactical lead at Kent Resilience Forum, were “typical for a Monday morning.”
He said that the upcoming weekend is going to be “extremely busy” on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
It’s the second-busiest getaway weekend of the summer vacations, according to Mr. Howe.
“As we’ve just learned, traffic numbers crossing the Channel were up to pre-pandemic levels over the last weekend, and with the enhanced checks it is longer to get through, so it takes very little to generate those tailbacks,” the author writes.
In response to what the remainder of the summer might hold, he stated: “In general, it’s a very susceptible scenario; it only takes a little to produce further complications.”
Just after one in the morning on Monday, National Highways reopened the coast-bound M20 in Kent between Junctions 9 and 11.
However, as part of Operation Brock, which is in place as a result of the issues at Dover, the road is still restricted to non-freight traffic between Junctions 8 and 9.
Over the weekend, there were also lengthy lines on the roads leading up to the Folkestone terminal of Eurotunnel.
Getlink, which owns Eurotunnel, John Keefe, director of public affairs, claimed that while “our services ran on time,” there was “far more congestion on the roadways.”
When asked what could be done to stop the problems from happening again, he responded to BBC One’s Breakfast by suggesting that passport checks be “put online.”
Many pieces of contemporary technology, he continued, “would lessen the dependence on personnel to carry out those procedures in situ.”
There is plenty that can be done to strengthen the border, according to the statement.
The road network needs to be more resilient, and there needs to be improved train connections to Folkestone, continued Mr. Keefe.
There are undoubtedly solutions, he continued. These remedies are not brand-new. They have been on the table for a very, very long time.
But hopefully this will truly get people’s attention.
The situation near Folkestone remained grave even though the tourist traffic at Dover had been dispersed by the early hours of yesterday morning.
Following the conversion of a section of the M20 into a holding area to handle the backlog of almost 600 lorries — some of which were delayed for as long as 18 hours — waiting to cross at Dover, drivers were forced to endure backups.
According to Jack Cousens, the AA’s head of roads policy: “Dover has finally recovered, but Folkestone has turned into the hotspot of holiday hell.”
“Good progress has been made, and we anticipate returning to normal traffic levels by tonight.”
The AA, however, cautioned vacationers that this weekend congestion might recur “through the summer.”
At Dover, more than 72,000 passengers—more than 200 miles of passenger and freight traffic combined—had been handled as of yesterday noon.
Although delays of “several hours” at Folkestone were “beginning to have a knock-on impact further up the highway network,” the port was claimed to be at “free-flow levels to the terminals.”
The final three miles of Andrew Dyer-Smith and his family’s vacation trip to France took them 21 hours, they said.
We arrived in Folkestone at 9 a.m. on Saturday to catch a train at 10.30 a.m., the father claimed, adding that they had been moving slowly for the previous 21+ hours.
He claimed that despite being disorganised, his children had slept soundly as he and his wife alternated driving.
When travellers finally arrived at the Eurotunnel, many were appalled to discover they had to wait even longer to board.
A disgruntled woman complained that it took four hours to board a train.
Children were changing into pyjamas and brushing their teeth by the side of the road, where every man, woman, and child had just used the restroom, the witness claimed.
She claimed that individuals who were backed up in lines on the A20 were not given access to amenities or water, saying, “We were treated worse than animals.”
The AA reported yesterday afternoon that the “severe delays” on the approach to the Eurotunnel in Folkestone were getting worse rather than better.
One exhausted parent reported being held for more than five hours, saying, “It’s hot, I have a youngster who is wanting to use the restroom, and quite simply I’m fed-up.”
But John Keefe, director of public affairs for Eurotunnel, insisted that they were not in charge of the roadways and expressed confidence in the efficiency of the “bit we manage”—from check-in to departure.
We are in charge of running the service; that is the only area in which we are in charge or have any authority, he said.
Volunteers started showing up yesterday to provide food and water for emergencies.
The Eurotunnel Le Shuttle service’s operator, Getlink, stated: “The transport situation in Kent remains tough.”
“Routes leading to the Channel are congested due to high levels of vacation traffic and abnormally high levels of vehicles on the highways.”
According to Eurotunnel, processing time at Folkestone was around 90 minutes behind schedule.
Due to the M20 being partially closed throughout the day, 7,000 tourists headed for the tunnel were diverted onto smaller routes, resulting in many kilometres of backups.
To upgrade facilities in England, the Department for Transport announced investments totaling more than £30 million.
Because a train was cancelled and British passengers were left stranded in France, travel mayhem extended to Eurostar cross-Channel services today.
On Monday, travellers attempting to cross the English Channel were prepared for scenes of “bedlam,” with thousands squeezed into crowded departure lounges.
It came after comparable events at Dover and Folkestone, where the absence of French border police was cited as the cause of severe traffic jams and delays.
Eurostar stated that the 08.01 Monday morning service between London and Paris had been “cancelled for operational reasons.”
Due to a broken-down train on the route in France, a train that was supposed to be travelling the other way, from Paris to London, was also cancelled on Sunday evening.
As a result, all services suffered as angry travellers were advised to reschedule or cancel their trips.
Despite this, only four of the Gare du Nord’s nine Eurostar ticket desks were open on Sunday during the height of the issues.
Marc Bull, Tom Holme, James Speak, and Rohan Gokhale, pals who also ride bicycles, were among those who were compelled to stay in France rather than report to their jobs in London on Monday.
They had taken the ferry on Friday to reach Dieppe, where they would spend the weekend before making the difficult trip on their Brompton bikes to Paris.
The 29-year-old Mr. Gokhale added, “We were all scheduled to take a train on Sunday, but it has been cancelled, so we all have to stay here.”
There’s not even a promise that a train will run during the day, and I was scheduled to return to work in the City on Monday morning.
We presume we’ll all have to pay for our own hotel rooms in Paris tonight, but we’ll need to go see Eurostar, said Mr. Bull, 39.
Like many others caught up in the confusion, the group of East London Hockey Club members was ignorant of the reason for the cancellation of their trains.
Before Eurostar shut its doors at the Gare du Nord on Sunday, they only managed to get us as far as the departure lounge.
Daniel Robinson, a British actor, was among those kept inside in the departure lounge. He said: “Three hours delayed, probably four. Could have to remain here tonight. This is bedlam.”
Additionally, Julia Hill, whose evening train was also postponed, tweeted: “Eurostar horror this evening.”
People from two trains were stranded for more than three hours in the stuffy, sweltering lounge at Paris Gare de Nord.
Advised that the train wouldn’t depart for at least another hour. Travel will be unpleasant in the 2020s.
Other travellers reported that their seats on a late-night Eurostar scheduled to depart close to midnight had been quadruple booked.
One passenger, who requested to be referred to by her first name, Sarah, stated, “It is absolutely horrible on board.” “As they take their seats, they see that others have taken the exact identical position.
We only have a small supply of food and water, and the heat is making us all sick.
Former French ambassador to the UK Sylvia Bernard was one of several who cited increased post-Brexit passport check delays as the cause of the issues that had become “the new normal.”
On LBC Radio on Monday morning, Ms. Bernard said, “It’s a mathematical reason of Brexit.”
It happened at a time when Parisian authorities were blocking attempts to boost the number of daily Eurostar trains.
The Channel Tunnel train operator and French border officials are at odds over plans to increase the number of daily trains travelling between London and Paris.
According to reports, Eurostar is pushing to run 17 trains each day between the two cities.
However, according to French government sources, border police and security scanning workers in France complain that they have a persistent staffing shortage and are unable to perform more services.
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, two potential candidates for the Tory leadership, have also blamed the French for not sending enough border guards.
Transport organisations have urged policymakers to increase funding for Dover’s “fragile” infrastructure, saying that even small mishaps might cause traffic havoc.
We have a traffic management strategy where we can regulate freight, in particular, to enable traffic to get to the Eurotunnel and the Port of Dover, according to Tony Howe from the Kent Resilience Forum.
The problem is that it is razor thin. It doesn’t take much to scuttle that idea.
The Eurotunnel allegedly became the newest “hotspot of vacation hell” on Sunday, with travellers complaining that they were “treated worse than animals” and made to sleep in their cars during traffic jams.
Families were still experiencing 21-hour delays as the third day of Britain’s summer vacation began, leaving many stranded in their cars overnight in Folkestone lineups.
While desperate travellers were compelled to use the edge as a public restroom, children changed into their pyjamas and brushed their teeth on the side of the road.
The disaster started on Friday morning when a “serious incident” at Dover was declared, forcing drivers to wait more than seven hours.
After only six out of 12 stations were initially staffed, the two days of traffic jams at the beginning of the busiest school holiday season in years were attributed to a paucity of French border guards.
While French officials attributed the delays to increased procedures brought on by Brexit, British officials accused France of failing to staff the border adequately.