Dover delays: Long waits persist for coach passengers

Travellers at Dover remain in long queues to catch ferries to France after waits in excess of 12 hours - although port authorities say the situation is now improving for new arrivals.

Speaking to the BBC on Sunday evening, parents told of coachloads of children still waiting to cross the Channel after arriving late on Saturday.

Port managers said all traffic was now inside the port ready for processing.

Disruption and delays were first reported on Friday night.

Extra ferries that were laid on overnight on Saturday were not enough to prevent the queues at Dover increasing through much of Sunday.

Officials cite slower border processing and a higher-than-expected number of coaches as causes of the delays.

The port said late on Sunday that around 40 coaches were still awaiting immigration processing, down from 111 earlier in the day.

P&O Ferries said that around 20 coaches were still waiting to board its ferries and that their wait time would be around five hours.

The company had earlier said wait times were around 10 hours, though many coach passengers and drivers contacted the BBC to say their waits had actually been much longer.

One driver taking a group from Cardiff to Austria said they had been in the vehicle for 14 hours.

On Saturday evening, holidaymaker Jennifer Fee said her coach was "turning around and going back to London" having been told there was "no chance of a ferry today".

Ms Fee sent the BBC footage of passengers camped out on the floor of a service station in nearby Folkestone - where coaches had been "stacked up" due to delays at the port.

Coach driver Zaishan Aslam was driving a group of schoolchildren from Cheltenham to Italy. He told the BBC they all arrived in Dover at 14:00 BST on Friday, and were finally on a ferry at 03:30 on Saturday.

The group have now arrived at their final destination, but Mr Aslam said they are coming back to the UK on Friday and he dreads to think what the situation with the ferries will be then.

The situation is "totally ridiculous", Mr Aslam said. "It's as if it was caused deliberately to deter coach drivers and schoolchildren from travelling".

Rob Howard, a teacher in Dorset travelling by coach with a group of schoolchildren, was on his way to northern Italy via Dover.

They arrived at the port at 16:00 on Saturday, but the group decided to turn around after waiting for more than 17 hours, Mr Howard said.

He said passengers were each given a chocolate bar and less than a bottle of water during those 17 hours, and "there was a smell of urine all over the place" as some coach toilets leaked.

The government has said it is in close contact with port authorities.

In an interview with the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said the delays were a result of a "combination of factors", including the high volume of coaches.

She said she sympathised with families and school children trying to get away on Easter holidays, and expected the problems to ease soon.

Labour's shadow levelling-up secretary, Lisa Nandy, told Sky News issues like the port delays could have been avoided "if the government got a grip, got down to brass tacks and started doing the actual job".

Officials have explained that long border processing times were partly to blame for delays - and ferry companies said bad weather had disrupted some journeys.

The port said ferry companies received 15% more coach bookings for the Easter period than what had been expected. Boarding coachloads of passengers is much slower than boarding cars.

Responding to claims of lengthy delays in border checks, officials in northern France said on Saturday that there were "no difficulties that we know of," but that many coaches had arrived to travel at around the same time.

All border checkpoints were operational and border police had switched some car checkpoints into slots for coaches, French officials added.

Simon Calder, travel correspondent at the Independent, said processing times since the UK left the EU had increased sharply "and that would seem to explain the delays".

An EU border at Dover meant things were "gumming up", as each individual passport had to be inspected and stamped after Brexit, he told the BBC on Saturday.

Asked whether the delays were a result of Brexit, Labour's Ms Nandy said: "The point is not whether we left the European Union or not... the point was that we left with a government that made big promises and once again didn't deliver."

And speaking to Sky News, Ms Braverman said viewing delays at the port as "an adverse effect of Brexit" would not be a fair assessment.

Many coaches stuck in Dover have been carrying schoolchildren from across the UK on school trips abroad.

Schoolteacher Sarah Dalby told the BBC her group began their journey from Nottinghamshire and 24 hours later were still in the queue for passport control at Dover.

"Nobody has been to speak to us in the whole time. There is no information available. No food or water," the head of science at Worksop College added.

The port apologised for "prolonged delays" and said the tailbacks were being cleared.

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