EU biometric checks Are Britain's borders ready - or is chaos looming?

Years in the planning, and years in the postponement: EES day is finally approaching. The EU's entry-exit system is modernised, streamlined, but possibly not quite ready for action.

- Gwyn Topham Lisa O'Carroll

From 12 October, non-EU citizens will have to register their biometric information at the border, with faces photographed and fingerprints scanned, before being allowed into the Schengen area.

After helping draw up the scheme a decade ago, the post-Brexit UK now finds itself lumped with nations from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe outside the bloc.

Hopes of prior registration via an app have not materialised, and the whole biometric process must take place at each airport, crossing or port.

That will have a particular sting for Britons on a short cross-Channel hop, where the official French border is located on British soil. Train, tunnel and sea passengers will need to complete EES formalities before the actual journey to Europe - meaning the indignity of queueing at a London terminal or by the white cliffs of Dover to relay bodily information to an EU database.

The affected operators, Eurostar, Eurotunnel and the Port of Dover, have had to rethink their processes and facilities and invest millions in computer kiosks and staff, to various degrees of readiness.

At Dover and the Eurotunnel, passengers will need to park and get out of cars - except those who have a disability, where border officers can use a tablet to process details. Dover quickly pointed to the potential for renewed traffic hell on the road to the constrained port, where tighter post-Brexit border checks have previously led to chaos and contingency traffic schemes.

Eurotunnel's owner, Getlink, which has more space and funds, was the first to declare an €80m (£70m) investment in border tech for its Le Shuttle service, which takes cars and lorries through the tunnel by train.