Shedding money Port fury at altered plan for border checks

I t’s a monumental white elephant, just painted black,” said Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Portsmouth city council’s cabinet member for transport, standing outside a £23m warehouse, which was completed two years ago.

- Jack Simpson

The 8,000 sq metre facility in Portsmouth International Port – the UK’s second busiest cross-Channel terminal – is the home to its border control post (BCP). One of more than 100 registered BCPs, it will be the place where many food and plant products coming through Portsmouth from the EU will be checked when post-Brexit import rules come in on 30 April .

Filled with expensive loading equipment and refrigeration systems, the site has 14 unloading bays, where lorries will be examined, and 22 processing chambers, where plant and meat products will be checked by hand for disease by government inspectors.

But despite millions of pounds being pumped into the project, half of the site will be empty and unused when it comes into operation next month, and the council is chasing the government for a £6m reimbursement of construction costs .

Mike Sellers, the port’s director , said: “When we built this, it was designed to the exact specifications the government wanted under its previous Border Operating Model . Now we are only expecting to use seven bays and 10 chambers.”