Dover ferry passengers advised to arrive early amid fears of summer-long disruption

theguardian.com:

Cross-Channel ferry passengers were being told to arrive in good time at Dover as queues built at the Port of Dover amid fears the severe disruption of recent days could return to Kent throughout the summer.

The ferry operator DFDS told passengers there were queues of about an hour for French border checks on Monday morning and to “allow a minimum of 120 minutes before your departure to complete all controls”.

P&O Ferries tweeted: “The queues have picked up and it is taking approximately one hour to clear passport control.”

Holidaymakers faced queues of up to 11 hours over the weekend with the British foreign minister, Liz Truss, blaming the French for shortages of passport control staff but others blaming red tape caused by Brexit.

The Port of Dover is confident, however, that it can cope and that the weekend was a nightmare combination of a five-fold increase in car numbers and a lack of French passport control staff on Friday morning that resulted in a huge backlog of cars trying to access the ferries.

Last weekend is typically the busiest of the year but this is the first year since Brexit the impact of extra passport checks could be seen because of the decline of passenger volumes during the pandemic.

Dover said it handled 11,000 cars on Friday compared with 2,000 on the equivalent weekend last year.

On Saturday, the numbers were just under 12,000, compared with 2,400 on the equivalent day in 2021, and on Sunday the port handled 10,000 compared with 1,900 in 2011.

The port said it had planned for the huge spike in numbers, which are also being experienced in airports in the UK and the rest of the world.

It had made nine passport booths available for car numbers with a triage system also prioritising tourists over hauliers.