Border control post at Portsmouth port could be demolished with much of facility not being used

The News, Portsmouth

Portsmouth port is expected to change dramatically as new physical checks are being introduced

Transcript

00:00 So Mike, can you give us your overall thoughts on the BCP as things stand?

00:05 Okay, so where we're standing now, we're in the plant inspection rooms. This

00:11 border control post was built two years ago, ready for the border checks, all part

00:18 of the government's plans as we left the EU. Now initially that was built under

00:24 something called the border operating model, based on a number or percentage of

00:29 checks of food products coming into the UK. So this facility here is huge, it

00:35 takes up two acres of land, we've got 14 bays, we've got 20 odd

00:41 chambers, but where we are now is we're heading towards the end of

00:49 April when the actual physical checks will start to happen on food products.

00:54 And that's under a border target operating model, a change in the

00:58 government policy of how they would carry out food inspections and target

01:04 the medium to high risk products. So in this area, we're at the low risk area, the

01:10 plant products, and behind me, all of those chambers that you can see behind me are not in use and will not be used under these new changes.

01:20 It seems that the port followed direction of the government a while back under a different parameters.

01:23 Those parameters have now been changed. It was mentioned as we were wandering around

01:27 that the building was primed for about 50 vehicle checks or so on an average.

01:32 Now they've been reduced to maybe about in the single digits. Can you give us

01:37 your thoughts on that, of where does the port go from here since a lot of

01:41 this building simply isn't going to be used to capacity? So it's been hugely

01:46 frustrating, it's been hugely challenging to deal with the

01:51 various changes that have happened to the policy and those checks that are

01:55 going to happen. You're right, we built this for quite a large number of checks.

02:01 We're the second largest cross-channel port, we have more destinations to Europe,

02:05 so you name it, food products wise, that comes into this port. And because of that,

02:10 we built two, in good faith, two of the government's plans, a huge facility

02:16 taken up to England land. Now what it means for us is we will be using half of

02:24 this facility based on its design for the checks from the end of April. Had we

02:29 have started from fresh under the plans for the border target operator model, we

02:33 would have built something even smaller than that. We probably only used

02:38 five, six bays and up to ten chambers for the amount of

02:44 inspections that were inspected. Now what that means for us is we have to plan for

02:50 the future, we have to think about what will happen with this facility. Now what

02:54 the Cabinet Office, the government, have done is they've given ports, including

02:58 Portsmouth, the ability to try and minimize that impact by using part of

03:03 the building for commercial purposes. The challenge we've got is, as you can see,

03:08 this is highly bespoke, it's been built specifically for those inspections, so

03:14 any use of commercial purposes means a complete change to this building.

03:19 In a general election year when things may change and we

03:26 don't know what the future is with regards to the reciprocal, potential

03:30 reciprocal agreements for Europe, it's too soon to make those changes.

03:36 So Gerald, we've just gone through the border control post here, we've seen the parts of

03:39 the building which are being used and which will not be. You described

03:43 it as a white elephant previously, do you believe that still be the case?

03:46 Absolutely, it happens to be painted black but it is a white elephant. It was built

03:52 exactly as the government told us to build it but now they've said we don't

03:56 need to use most of it and most of it's going to remain empty. Complete waste

04:01 of money and if they'd pay for it all, fine, but they didn't. They expected

04:05 council taxpayers here in Portsmouth to find seven million pounds towards this

04:09 and yet we're not going to be using most of this building. It's a total mess.

04:14 How does it make you feel that the cost of the taxpayer will continue in the years

04:17 to come because obviously the operating costs of this building are going to go away?

04:20 No, absolutely and it's a tax on the people of Portsmouth. It's

04:25 unnecessary. We operated for many years without needing any of these checks. Why

04:31 do we really need them? If the government say they should happen then the

04:36 government should be picking up the bill. The uncertainty is also going to

04:40 continue because after speaking to Mike he said that plans to actually repurpose

04:45 parts of the building that can't be used, there's uncertainty around that because

04:49 the government haven't set out exactly what's going to happen and they

04:53 won't give us permission to reuse this land and actually it could be reused for

04:58 something productive to bring trade into Portsmouth and money into the port and

05:02 yet the government won't let us do it. It is a mess of indecision

05:07 and bad decisions all the way through from government over the last few years.

05:12 So the border control post has been described by many as a wise elephant and

05:16 the cost of the ports of taxpayer is set to continue. It will cost £800,000

05:20 for this building just to be maintained and up and running and several parts of

05:24 the building are not being used. There are concerns going forward that this will have a

05:28 major impact on the ports finances and following from that it will also have a

05:32 massive impact on the council's local authority funding as a whole. The port

05:38 directors are struggling how they're going to plan for the future of this

05:40 building so all of that is up in the air.

05:43 Freddie Webb, Ports of Muse, Portsmouth International Port.

05:48 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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