Brexit chaos near Dover: A truck parking lot brings a village to white heat

Sunday January 24th 2021

Brexit chaos at Dover
A truck parking lot brings a village to white heat

By Diana Dittmer

Peace and tranquility have been over in the small town of Guston since Brexit. Here in Kent, the "Garden of England", one of many new customs facilities is to be built to clear trucks for transit to Europe. Even die-hard Brexiteers are going to the barricades.

The residents of Guston, a community of 2,000 souls, could not have believed their eyes when suddenly the bulldozers approached and started to set up a large construction site right behind their garden fences. A new customs clearance facility for 1200 trucks is to be built here in the south-eastern tip of Great Britain on an area of ​​11 hectares. The government in London had actually promised to work with them to decide on such construction plans in connection with Brexit. Instead, the excavators came straight away.

The quaint Kentish village is just minutes from Dover. The facility is one of a total of ten that London has either already opened, is still building or is planning. All should be operational in July at the latest. Both supporters and opponents of Brexit live in Guston. It was clear to everyone that the thousands of trucks that haul goods back and forth between the island and the continent on the Dover-Calais route would need more space to be cleared by customs after the country left the EU. The only question was where exactly was that supposed to be?

Since Dover was too small for a new, larger customs office, the government also inspected the fields around the small village of Guston. The main roads are easy to get to. The A2 and A258 run around and through the village. At least on paper, it looks like a perfect alternative. On New Year's Eve 2020, Minister of Transport Rachel Maclean informed the residents about the purchase of the fields around them. Quiet and tranquility are over in Guston since then, as in many places in Kent. People's anger is growing every day.

Goods "potentially to burn is cheaper"

It is becoming increasingly clear to everyone how poorly prepared the Brexit era was. The joy of the supposedly successful deal on Christmas Eve is followed by more and more disillusionment. Large logistics companies like DB Schenker have already had to pull the emergency brake and interrupt shipments from the European Union (EU) to Great Britain due to the bureaucratic chaos.

Only around ten percent of the parcels were provided with the correct and necessary documents, it was said to justify. These cases should have been extensively researched. The responsible employees in Great Britain could not keep up with it. Schenker is now accepting shipments to Great Britain again. However, other transport groups and online mail order companies have dropped out of business with Great Britain.

An end to the border chaos is not in sight. Due to the significantly higher shipping costs due to Brexit, many British textile retailers no longer accept returns from the EU. It is cheaper for companies to either "give up or potentially burn" the goods than to take them back, the head of the UK Fashion & Textile Association, Adam Mansell, told the BBC. "That's part of the fine print of the deal." Several British textile companies have set up warehouses in Belgium, Ireland and Germany, where the returns are now being collected.

In Ashford – 35 minutes from Guston – construction work on another customs parking lot for a total of 1,700 trucks is now well advanced. The Green Councilor Liz Wright was stunned by the chaos in December. "The government has only just noticed that 80 percent of the traffic goes through Dover," said the staunch opponent of Brexit sarcastically to the NDR about the construction site on her own doorstep.

"Clear abuse of power"

Turning back the clock becomes difficult for people. The fight is too much like one between "David and Goliath," say the residents of Guston, one in five of whom is already retired and over 65 years old. But they don't want to give up without a fight either. Their goal is to have the truck parking lot moved to another location behind their gardens. The local Anglican priest and ex-president of the Chamber of Commerce, Peter Sherred, who has lived and worked here for 25 years, accuses the government of "clear abuse of power" in a complaint.

The residents were presented with a fait accompli. This is "unethical, immoral and unprincipled," criticized Sherred. "We have been told that sometime in January we will be involved in the decision-making process to express our views." Even if it says that the building permit is still pending, he thinks it is untrustworthy. The construction machines were working under high pressure, which is why the parking lot was "a fait accompli".

The Ministry of Transport in London is trying to appease residents meanwhile: The system is only intended for use for five years, according to a letter. It is ensured "that there will be no significant or long-term environmental impact". In addition, the ministry points out that objections would be considered until February 3rd. The residents do not believe that the area around the village can ever be restored to its natural state.

Brexiteers feel deceived

But snap shots often take revenge, possibly here in Kent too. Because the government has ignored something important in its planning: the area around Ashford is a floodplain. The more that is concreted, the less water can run off. That doesn't bode well for the new customs facilities. If there had been orderly negotiations with the residents, this point would certainly have come up.

Even die-hard local Brexiteers now feel deceived. They hadn't expected to be literally overrun by the government. "If we could vote again, we would vote for the EU," the Guardian quotes a resident of Ashford who voted for Brexit. The Ministry of Transport has at least heard the protests from Guston. The deadline for objections to the development plan was extended from two to three weeks.