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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.

A brand new £24m border control post in Portsmouth may have to be demolished because repeated changes to post-Brexit border arrangements have left it commercially unviable.
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The new border control post in Portsmouth

A brand new £24m border control post in Portsmouth may have to be demolished because repeated changes to post-Brexit border arrangements have left it commercially unviable.

“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.

“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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‘Total and absolute mess’

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.”

Undated handout photo issued by Portsmouth City Council of the Spinnaker Tower from above. Issue date: Monday August 2, 2021.
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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.

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A brand new £24m border control post in Portsmouth may have to be demolished because repeated changes to post-Brexit border arrangements have left it commercially unviable.

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.”

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‘Shameful’ that black boys in London more likely to die than white boys, says Met Police chief

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'Shameful' that black boys in London more likely to die than white boys, says Met Police chief

It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.

In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner said that relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.

Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.

“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”

He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.

However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”

Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.

“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.

“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.

“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.

“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”

Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said racism is still an issue in the force
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Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley

The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.

“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”

Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.

“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”

‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’

Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.

“If you are in the middle of the crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.

“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.

“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”

“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.

“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”

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How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief

‘Close to broken’ justice system ‘frustrating’ and ‘stressed’

Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for others.

“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.

“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.

“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.

“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.

“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”

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Leveson explains plans to fix justice system

Challenge to reform the Met

The Met chief’s comments come two years after an official report found the force is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.

Baroness Casey was commissioned in 2021 to look into the Met Police after serving police officer Wayne Couzens abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard.

She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.

At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.

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However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.

A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Watch the full interview on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30am on Sunday.

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Unite votes to suspend Angela Rayner over Birmingham bin strike

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Unite votes to suspend Angela Rayner over Birmingham bin strike

Labour’s largest union donor, Unite, has voted to suspend Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner over her role in the Birmingham bin strike row.

Members of the trade union, one of the UK’s largest, also “overwhelmingly” voted to “re-examine its relationship” with Labour over the issue.

They said Ms Rayner, who is also housing, communities and local government secretary, Birmingham Council’s leader, John Cotton, and other Labour councillors had been suspended for “bringing the union into disrepute”.

There was confusion over Ms Rayner’s membership of Unite, with her office having said she was no longer a member and resigned months ago and therefore could not be suspended.

But Unite said she was registered as a member. Parliament’s latest register of interests had her down as a member in May.

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The union said an emergency motion was put to members at its policy conference in Brighton on Friday.

More on Angela Rayner

Unite is one of the Labour Party’s largest union donors, donating £414,610 in the first quarter of 2025 – the highest amount in that period by a union, company or individual.

The union condemned Birmingham’s Labour council and the government for “attacking the bin workers”.

Mountains of rubbish have been piling up in the city since January after workers first went on strike over changes to their pay, with all-out strike action starting in March. An agreement has still not been made.

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Rat catcher tackling Birmingham’s bins problem

Ms Rayner and the councillors had their membership suspended for “effectively firing and rehiring the workers, who are striking over pay cuts of up to £8,000”, the union added.

‘Missing in action’

General secretary Sharon Graham told Sky News on Saturday morning: “Angela Rayner, who has the power to solve this dispute, has been missing in action, has not been involved, is refusing to come to the table.”

She had earlier said: “Unite is crystal clear, it will call out bad employers regardless of the colour of their rosette.

“Angela Rayner has had every opportunity to intervene and resolve this dispute but has instead backed a rogue council that has peddled lies and smeared its workers fighting huge pay cuts.

“The disgraceful actions of the government and a so-called Labour council, is essentially fire and rehire and makes a joke of the Employment Relations Act promises.

“People up and down the country are asking whose side is the Labour government on and coming up with the answer not workers.”

SN pics from 10/04/25 Tyseley Lane, Tyseley, Birmingham showing some rubbish piling up because of bin strikes
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Piles of rubbish built up around Birmingham because of the strike over pay

Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said the government’s “priority is and always has been the residents of Birmingham”.

He said the decision by Unite workers to go on strike had “caused disruption” to the city.

“We’ve worked to clean up streets and remain in close contact with the council […] as we support its recovery,” he added.

A total of 800 Unite delegates voted on the motion.

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Dozens of MPs call for UK government to recognise Palestine as state

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Dozens of MPs call for UK government to recognise Palestine as state

Nearly 60 Labour MPs have called on David Lammy and the Foreign Office to immediately recognise Palestine as a state.

A mix of centrist and left-wing MPs, including some committee chairs, wrote to the foreign secretary this week to say “by not recognising [Palestine] as a state, we undermine our own policy of a two-state solution and set an expectation that the status quo can continue and see the effective erasure and annexation of Palestinian territory”.

The 59 MPs suggest the government pursue five different measures to prevent the Israeli government from carrying out its Rafah plan, adding that they believed Gaza was being “ethnically cleansed” – a claim vehemently denied by Israel.

The letter was organised by Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East group.

Palestinians react as they ask for food from a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis, in Gaza City, July 7, 2025. REUTERS/Ebrahim Hajjaj
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Palestinians ask for food from a charity kitchen in Gaza on 7 July. Pic: Reuters

It states that the Israeli plan, which would see the “population transfer to the southern tip of Gaza in preparation for deportation outside the strip”, is an accurate description, but that they believe a clearer way to describe it is the “ethnic cleansing of Gaza”.

Israeli officials have said they want to separate the civilian population from Hamas, which still controls parts of Gaza and holds dozens of hostages abducted in the October 7 attack that triggered the war 21 months ago.

Emmanuel Macron discussed recognising Palestine as a state at a joint news conference with Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday – the same day the letter was signed.

The French president said: “Today, working together in order to recognise the state of Palestine and to initiate this political momentum is the only path to peace.”

While France has not yet recognised a Palestinian state yet, Norway, Ireland and Spain coordinated their recognition last year.

The letter demands ministers take five different measures to:

• Recognise the state of Palestine
• Continue support for the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA)
• Secure the release of hostages
• Press for the full and unhindered resumption of humanitarian aid
• Fully review and place restrictions on trade with and financial support of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank

The government says it is already providing funding for the UNRWA and working to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas, but immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood will be a much more controversial move.

Sky News understands this is the second time MPs have formally called on the government to immediately recognise the state of Palestine, with previous letters signed by some parliamentary aides and even junior ministers.

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Ministers have indicated their plan to recognise Palestine would be “at a time that is most conducive to the peace process” without further clarity of when that might be.

They have also indicated that it would not be suitable to speculate about future sanctions, as this could reduce their impact.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “Since day one, this government has been clear that we need to see an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages cruelly detained by Hamas, better protection of civilians, much-needed food aid, medicines, shelter and other supplies immediately being allowed to enter Gaza, and a path to long-term peace and stability.

“The situation on the ground in Gaza is horrendous – for the hostages and for Palestinians – and we urgently want to see a deal done, to end the suffering on all sides.

“We are committed to recognising a Palestinian state and to doing so when will have most impact in support of a peace process. We continue to provide lifesaving aid to supporting Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and to work closely in support of the Palestinian Authority.”

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