Brexit stockpiling is causing 10-mile lorry queues and delays of up to five hours in Calais, it has emerged, as hopes of a trade deal fade. Sources close to the president of the Hauts-de-France region said there had been 50% more heavy goods vehicles on the approach roads to the French port and Eurotunnel in the past three weeks. “November and December are always busy months, but extreme stockpiling because businesses are trying to get goods into the UK before 1 January is the main cause,” the source said. “Normally we have about 6,000 trucks, but now it is about 9,000. It shows the extreme of the consequences of Brexit whether there is a deal or not. Trucks are having to slow down all along the A16 back to Dunkirk with delays of up to 17km.” The delays in crossing the Channel are causing acute problems in the UK. Honda and Jaguar have had to halt production temporarily because of parts shortages, and it emerged on Friday that Ikea had been besieged by complaints because of what it called “operational challenges” as shipments of its flatpack furniture are held up at clogged ports. The tailbacks give a glimpse of things to come next year when customs, standards and immigration checks will kick in on both sides of the channel. Eurotunnel said it believed delays on the British side would continue for the next three weeks. Its contingencies centre on the worst-case scenario of a no-deal Brexit involving up to 7,000 lorries queuing in Kent. Boris Johnson and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Friday they were unlikely to reach a post-Brexit trade deal by Sunday. Hauts-de-France leaders have been planning for Brexit congestion since the first threat of no deal in 2018, when the regional president, Xavier Bertrand, made a furious speech in the European parliament warning of a “dark scenario”. The French authorities calculated at the time that a two-minute delay at the port or the Eurotunnel gateway would lead to queues of 27km on either side, so slow-moving queues of 17km will be read in some quarters as an achievement. Tailback traffic is also quickly caused by security incidents, with the continuing issue of migrants trying to board lorry trailers.
The delays have been matched by long tailbacks at the Eurotunnel, caused partly by a reduction in the number of ferries because of Covid and the number of empty lorries returning to the continent after their stockpiling deliveries. Queues sometimes stretching back at least five miles have formed almost every day for the past two weeks. “We are seeing several hundred trucks above forecasts on midweek days,” a Eurotunnel spokesman said. Recent company figures show traffic 11% up on last year for November. Eurotunnel said contingency plans, also modelled since 2018, meant it could move traffic on to the trains quickly. “We expect it to be like this for the next three weeks with some tailing off as we get close to Christmas and then drop off in the first week of January,” the spokesman said, adding that there would be less travel than usual because of Covid restrictions. “Lots of companies have said their production for the first two weeks will stop because of the nervousness of what is coming so that will have an impact and we also believe the authorities are going to be lenient in the first few days after 1 January.” The drive to stockpile flows from the fact that customs, regulatory and agrifood checks will be introduced deal or no deal because the UK is leaving the single market. Further disruption is expected over the weekend in Kent with a live test of Operation Brock, the no-deal traffic contingency plan for the M20, put in place on Friday night. The UK is hoping to mitigate the impact by phasing in checks over six months, but businesses have voiced concerns that the customs software and the special electronic Brexit passports for international freight drivers to get into Kent will not be ready in time for Brexit day. A House of Lords committee wrote to Michael Gove on Thursday to say it was “not confident that all necessary technological, physical and welfare arrangements will be in place in time to avoid or mitigate disruption”. It raised concerns voiced by software experts that some key customs systems are only going live at the end of the month while others are still in development and testing. In the letter Sandip Verma, the chair of the EU goods sub-committee, criticises the “default expectation” of the government “that everything will be ready”, which is “reflected in the worrying lack of contingency preparations”, including failure to get all traders ready, including SMEs that cannot afford customs agents.