Half-term border queues warning due to strikes

Half-term holidaymakers are being warned of delays connected the mode backmost into the UK, during planned onslaught enactment by Border Force staff.

The PCS national expects 1,000 members astatine the ports of Calais, Dunkirk and Dover, and the Coquelles Channel Tunnel Terminal, to locomotion retired betwixt Friday 17 February and Monday 20 February.

It is portion of their ongoing wage dispute.

The authorities said getting done passport power could instrumentality longer.

Under the "juxtaposed controls" system, UK officers cheque inbound passengers and freight successful France and Belgium, earlier they statesman their journey.

The subject and civilian servants volition supply screen during the strike, though subject unit volition not beryllium sent implicit to France.

They volition besides assistance astatine different UK ports and airports, filling successful for Border Force unit being moved to those locations straight affected.

The Home Office said radical travelling into immoderate UK larboard during the onslaught should beryllium prepared for longer hold times astatine borderline control.

The PCS says its run of concern enactment is implicit pay, pensions, redundancy presumption and occupation security.

Steve Dann, Border Force's main operating officer, described the onslaught arsenic "disappointing".

He said information and borderline information was a priority, and the organisation was moving with its French counterparts and the question manufacture to "meet captious request and enactment the travel of passengers and goods done our border".

February half-term is traditionally a engaged clip for travel, and this volition beryllium the archetypal since the lifting of Covid question restrictions past March.

Abta, the commercialized relation for question businesses, said bookings had been ramping up implicit the past fewer months.

But it added that astir half-term holidaymakers would question by level - for example, to places similar the Canary Islands and mainland Spain.

And it pointed retired that erstwhile strikes by Border Force unit astatine six UK airports implicit Christmas did not origin important delays oregon disruption.

Meanwhile, ferry services betwixt Dover and Calais were suspended for astir of Thursday owed to abstracted onslaught enactment successful France.