UK port operators to seek compensation if post-Brexit trade barriers are lowered

UK port operators have reportedly said they must be compensated by the government if it negotiates a deal to lower trade barriers with the EU, having been forced to invest millions in building post-Brexit border control facilities under the Conservatives.

The British Ports Association (BPA) is said to have written to the Cabinet Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs warning of huge losses after operators built sophisticated control points to enforce strict checks on animal and plant imports .

“Ports should not have to repeatedly incur costs because of changing political winds,” said the BPA, in the letter seen by the Financial Times. “We are seeking a conversation on how the sector might be reasonably compensated.”

Labour has pledged to strike a veterinary deal with the EU to prevent “unnecessary border checks” and limit food price increases resulting from importers’ higher costs , as part of plans to revisit the trade barriers put in place following Brexit.

The letter, which was sent after Labour’s election landslide victory, lists how port owners have built “a series of expensive and high-spec border control posts at the direction of government”.

The former government previously said it had spent £200m co-funding facilities to handle checks at 41 ports after the UK’s departure from the European Union.

Port operators have been vocal about the significant expense they have incurred for the new, hardly used facilities. Even before Labour indicated that it would ease trade barriers, the scope of post-Brexit checks on imports had been scaled back from the original remit, meaning much of what had been built was redundant.

Earlier this year, Gerald Vernon-Jackson, Portsmouth city council’s cabinet member for transport, described the £23m, 8,000 sq metre facility at the UK’s second busiest cross-Channel terminal as a “monumental white elephant”.

“It was built for between 50 and 80 vehicles a day: we are now expecting to process only half a dozen when it opens,” said Mike Sellers, the port’s director.

The facility is one of more than 100 registered border control posts (BCPs) to be used for checking food and plant products coming from the EU when post-Brexit import rules came into force from 30 April .

Related: ‘It was built for 80 vehicles. We’re expecting six’: the big Brexit border posts that may never be fully used

However, half of the site has been left empty and unused and the council has been chasing a reimbursement of £6m of the construction costs from the government. Unlike the majority of ports across the country, which are privately owned, Portsmouth is owned by the council, meaning the authority picks up the associated costs.

In expectation of the post-Brexit checks, 40 ports, including Portsmouth, applied for the government’s £200m Port Infrastructure Fund in 2020 to build new, or upgrade existing, infrastructure. Among the newly built BCPs were three at Hull, Immingham and Killingholme on the Humber, costing £70m, and a £15m BCP at the port of Purfleet in Essex.

But port owners have argued that the fund was not big enough, and that they have had to cover the difference. Their trade association, the UK Major Ports Group, calculates that they have paid £100m to fill the funding gap.