A new £24m border control post may have to be demolished because repeated changes to post-Brexit border arrangements have left it commercially unviable.
The facility at Portsmouth International Port is due to begin physical checks on food and plant imports from the EU at the end of next month, but changes to border protocols since it was built mean half of the building will never be used.
Built with a £17m central government grant and £7m from Portsmouth City Council, which owns the port, it is designed to carry out checks on up to 80 truck loads of produce a day. The port now expects to process only four or five daily.
As a consequence, half of the 14 loading bays will never be used, and annual running costs of £800,000 a year will not be covered by the fees charged to importers for carrying out checks.
Portsmouth is not alone, with ports across the country puzzling over how to make the over-sized, over-specified buildings commissioned by the government pay for themselves with far less traffic.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says it spent £200m part-funding new facilities to cope with post-Brexit border controls at 41 ports. It acknowledges that fewer checks will now be required and says ports are free to use spare capacity as they wish.
The problem in Portsmouth is that the facility, built for a very specific purpose inside a secure area, has no obvious commercial use, so the port is considering building a new, smaller facility, and decommissioning or even demolishing the existing building to make space for a commercially viable project.
Image: The new border control post in Portsmouth
“This was built to a Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] specification when the border operating model was announced and it’s been mothballed for two years while the checks were delayed,” Mike Sellers, director of Portsmouth International Port and chairman of the British Ports Association, told Sky News.
“Now the border will be operating with far fewer checks, we are going to struggle to cover the running costs of around £800,000 a year.
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“So we have to look to the future and work out what strategically is the best way to minimise the impact to the port and to the council.
“I know it sounds ironic, but that could be building another border control post much smaller than this facility, and looking to find commercial ways to get income either through this facility or to demolish it and use the operational land for something else.”
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Port owner Portsmouth City Council meanwhile wants its £7m share of the £24m build cost reimbursed by the government.
“We as a council had to find £7m to help build this facility and now we’re on the fifth change of mind about how much inspection there will be. Half of this building is going to be left empty, idle, unused, and yet it’s costing council taxpayers of Portsmouth a great deal of money,” said councillor Gerald Vernon-Jones, transport lead for the council.
Were the Portsmouth facility to close it could impact the security of UK food imports, as the port is the main alternative route to Dover, providing much-needed resilience to a supply chain heavily reliant on the Short Straits route.
“It’s a total and absolute mess, we have an enormous white elephant here,” Mr Vernon-Jones said.
“If we can’t afford to keep port health people here all day, every day, to do those examinations then everything will have to come through Dover, and that’s enormously risky for this country. If Dover is closed for some reason, industrial action or whatever, then the whole country’s food is at ransom.”
Image: Portsmouth is the UK’s second busiest cross-Channel port
The British Ports Association meanwhile has raised concerns with ministers about the preparedness of the new inspection regime at new border control posts (BCPs), due to be enforced in less than six weeks.
The trade body says ports have still not been told what hours BCPs will be required to open, or how many staff from two state inspection agencies will be required on site.
Crucially, they also do not know how much they will be able to charge importers for inspections because the government has not revealed what price it will levy at the wholly state-owned and run BCP at Sevington in Kent, 20 miles inland from Dover.
Given the dominance of Dover in UK food imports, the so-called common user charge will set the price for the rest of the market, but other ports still have no idea where to set fees.
Defra says it will inform the industry shortly of the fees it has determined following consultation.
The fate of the Portsmouth facility, obsolete before it has even opened, symbolises the delay and indecision around import controls since the Brexit deal came into force in January 2021.
While UK exports to the EU have faced border and customs controls since 1 January 2021, the UK government has delayed similar checks on EU imports five times and changed the control regime.
The original July 2021 deadline for physical checks of plant and animal produce was postponed because the BCPs were not ready, and further delays followed, with the government citing the impact on the food supply chain and the cost of living crisis.
In April 2022 the government announced a wholesale revision of its plans for the border, introducing a new risk-based approach that limits checks to certain high and medium-risk food and plant categories.
This was then delayed again, with a staged introduction finally beginning in January, with medium-risk food and plant imports requiring health certificates signed off by vets or plant health inspectors, followed by physical checks from 30 April.
Even with reduced checks on importsm the government’s own analysis suggests border controls will add £330m a year to the cost of trading with the continent and increase food inflation.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Our border control posts have sufficient capacity and capability, including for temperature controlled consignments, to handle the volume and type of expected checks and the authorities will be working to minimise disruption as these checks are introduced.”
Sir Keir Starmer has said US-UK trade talks are “well advanced” ahead of tariffs expected to be imposed by Donald Trump on the UK this week – but rejected a “knee-jerk” response.
Speaking to Sky News political editor Beth Rigby, the prime minister said the UK is “working hard on an economic deal” with the US and said “rapid progress” has been made on it ahead of tariffs expected to be imposed on Wednesday.
But, he admitted: “Look, the likelihood is there will be tariffs. Nobody welcomes that, nobody wants a trade war.
“But I have to act in the national interest and that means all options have to remain on the table.”
Sir Keir added: “We are discussing economic deals. We’re well advanced.
“These would normally take months or years, and in a matter of weeks, we’ve got well advanced in those discussions, so I think that a calm approach, a collected approach, not a knee-jerk approach, is what’s needed in the best interests of our country.”
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Downing Street said on Monday the UK is expecting to be hit by new US tariffs on Wednesday – branded “liberation day” by the US president – as a deal to exempt British goods would not be reached in time.
A 25% levy on car and car parts had already been announced but the new tariffs are expected to cover all exports to the US.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business and trade secretary, earlier told Sky News he is “hopeful” the tariffs can be reversed soon.
But he warned: “The longer we don’t have a potential resolution, the more we will have to consider our own position in relation to [tariffs], precluding retaliatory tariffs.”
He added the government was taking a “calm-headed” approach in the hope a deal can be agreed but said it is only “reasonable” retaliatory tariffs are an option, echoing Sir Keir’s sentiments over the weekend.
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‘Everything on table over US tariffs’
Mr Trump will unveil his tariff plan on Wednesday afternoon at the first Rose Garden news conference of his second term, the White House press secretary said.
“Wednesday, it will be Liberation Day in America, as President Trump has so proudly dubbed it,” Karoline Leavitt said.
“The president will be announcing a tariff plan that will roll back the unfair trade practices that have been ripping off our country for decades. He’s doing this in the best interest of the American worker.”
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Tariffs would cut UK economy by 1%
UK government forecaster the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said a 20 percentage point increase in tariffs on UK goods and services would cut the size of the British economy by 1% and force tax rises this autumn.
Global markets remained flat or down on Monday in anticipation of the tariffs, with the FTSE 100 stock exchange trading about 1.3% lower on Monday, closing with a 0.9% loss.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.6% after a volatile day which saw it down as much as 1.7% in the morning.
However, the FTSE 100 is expected to open about 0.4% higher on Tuesday, while Asian markets also steadied, with Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 broadly unchanged after a 4% slump yesterday.
Kristin Smith, CEO of the US-based Blockchain Association, will be leaving the cryptocurrency advocacy group for the recently launched Solana Policy Institute.
In an April 1 notice, the Blockchain Association (BA) said Smith would be stepping down from her role as CEO on May 16. According to the association, the soon-to-be former CEO will become president of the Solana Policy Institute on May 19.
The association’s notice did not provide an apparent reason for the move to the Solana advocacy organization nor say who would lead the group after Smith’s departure. Cointelegraph reached out to the Blockchain Association for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith’s April 1 announcement. Source: LinkedIn
Smith, who has worked at the BA since 2018 and was deputy chief of staff for former Montana Representative Denny Rehberg, will follow DeFi Education Fund CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levine, leaving his position to join the Solana Policy Institute as CEO. According to Whitehouse-Levine, the organization plans to educate US policymakers on Solana.
With members from the crypto industry, including Coinbase, Ripple Labs, and Chainlink Labs, the BA has filed a lawsuit against the US Internal Revenue Service, challenging regulations requiring brokers to report crypto transactions. The group often criticized the US Securities and Exchange Commission under former chair Gary Gensler for its “regulation by enforcement” approach to crypto, resulting in steep legal fees for many companies.
Less than 48 hours after the Solana Policy Institute’s launch, it’s unclear what the group’s immediate goals may be for engaging with US lawmakers and advocating for the industry. The organization described itself as a non-partisan nonprofit group.
The most senior and long-serving civil servants could be offered a maximum of £95,000 to quit their jobs as part of a government efficiency drive.
Sky News reported last week that several government departments had started voluntary exit schemes for staff in a bid to make savings, including the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs, the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office.
The Department for Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government have yet to start schemes but it is expected they will, with the former already set to lose staff following the abolition of NHS England that was announced earlier this month.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, confirmed in last week’s spring statement that the government was setting aside £150m to fund the voluntary exit schemes, which differ from voluntary redundancy in that they offer departments more flexibility around the terms offered to departing staff.
Ms Reeves said the funding would enable departments to reduce staffing numbers over the next two years, creating “significant savings” on staff employment costs.
A maximum limit for departing staff is usually set at one month per year of service capped at 21 months of pay or £95,000.
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Whitehall sources stressed the figure was “very much the maximum that could be offered” given that the average civil service salary is just over £30,000 per year.
Whitehall departments will need to bid for the money provided at the spring statement and match the £150m from their own budgets, bringing the total funding to £300m.
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The Cabinet Office is understood to be targeting 400 employees in a scheme that was announced last year and will continue to run over this year.
A spokesman said each application to the scheme would be examined on a case-by-case basis to ensure “we retain critical skills and experience”.
It is up to each government department to decide how they operate their scheme.
The voluntary exit schemes form part of the government’s ambition to reduce bureaucracy and make the state more efficient amid a gloomy economic backdrop.
The move could result in 10,000 civil service jobs being axed after numbers ballooned during the pandemic.
Ms Reeves hopes the cuts, which she said will be to “back office jobs” rather than frontline services, but civil service unions have raised concerns that government departments will inevitably lose skilled and experienced staff.
The cuts form part of a wider government agenda to streamline the civil service and the size of the British state, which Sir Keir Starmer criticised as “weaker than it has ever been”.
During the same speech, he announced that NHS England, the administrative body that runs the NHS, would also be scrapped to eliminate duplication and cut costs.