UK wasted more than €100m on zombie Brexit border inspection posts

The UK wasted more than €100m in taxpayers’ money to set up zombie Brexit border inspection posts that were never used, it has been revealed. The overall cost of Brexit was put at an estimated £4.7 billion (€5.6 billion) by Britain’s National Audit Office last year, but this included years-long transformation of the software used for customs declarations and other systems built to cope with the UK leaving the single market. Fresh information from the UK tax office on the exact spend on the seven “inland border facilities” has come to light.

The sites were built but quickly decommissioned as the Conservative government at the time vacillated over plans to check goods coming in from the Continent. The EU launched all the checks in Calais, Dublin and other European ports from day one as the UK was treated as a “third country” overnight. A site that remains operational is Holyhead, a small site close to the main road to the port which receives goods from Ireland. According to a freedom of information (FOI) request, the site cost £14 million to acquire and another £23 million to build.

But five of the seven “inland border facilities” in England and Wales never got to operational stage because the Tories decided not to implement all the border checks after concluding food coming from the EU would be of the same high standard as it was before Brexit. Portsmouth port, which is owned by the city council, spent £23 million on building its border control post, which has never been used at full capacity because of the decision to scale back the checks.

The port received £17.1 million in government funding for the project, leaving the council to make up the £6 million shortfall, which could otherwise have been spent on essential services. The most controversial British zombie facility was known as “Dover white cliffs”. Furious residents at the village of Guston were told of the plans for the inland border facility on December 31st, 2020, just hours before a “transition year” ended and Brexit was due to be implemented with supposed checks on all lorries coming across the Channel. [ British Ambassador to Ireland Kara Owen on current Anglo-Irish relations, trade opportunities, and the possibility of a Brexit reversal Opens in new window ] Information from tax authorities, released under an FOI request, shows the facility has so far cost the taxpayer £28 million, even though it remains a field.

The Department for Transport paid £21 million to procure the site and spent a further £7 million on initial ground works, including an archaeological survey for any Roman remains. Other unused sites were at Birmingham, in the airport car park; in Warrington, serving lorries coming from Ireland to Liverpool, Holyhead and Heysham; at Ebbsfleet, on the Thames estuary; and at North Weald, near Stansted airport. Authorities said Birmingham, Ebbsfleet and North Weald “did not require the acquisition of land”.

The decision to build Brexit lorry parks so far from Dover underlined the lack of preparation for the UK’s departure from the EU. Most of the UK’s lorry traffic is concentrated in Dover, but as a designated area of outstanding beauty it was impossible to conduct the post-Brexit customs and standard checks near the port. The UK finally opted for a site 20 miles inland at Sevington in Kent, but even that was last minute. The government previously revealed in a parliamentary question that total capital costs ran to £154 million.

This included £30 million on the acquisition of farmland between Sevington and Mersham for Britain’s principal Brexit border facility and another £70 million to build it. HMRC has revealed through FOI that the operational costs have run to £179 million, money that would not have been spent had Brexit not happened. – Guardian