19 April 2024 (Lloyd's List) - PORTS across the UK are seeking clarity on when EU import checks will be ‘switched on’, after a report in the Financial Times claimed they were being delayed for a fifth time.

But Lloyd’s List understands that those checks will come into force on April 30 as originally outlined, but will be implemented at a slower pace than planned to ease disruption.

The FT claims to have seen a presentation which revealed Brexit checks would once again be delayed to avoid disruption.

The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs called this “misleading reporting” and confirmed those checks would be ‘switched on’ on 30 April as planned, beginning with goods “posing the highest biosecurity risk” as “we build up to full check rates and high levels of compliance”.

This was confirmed by representatives of Associated British Ports, one of the UK’s leading port operators, and the British Ports Association, which represents a vast array of UK ports.

“What we understand is that the actual notional date for checks and the common user charge remains as the end of April 2024, facilities will just ramp up more slowly than anticipated,” director of corporate communications at ABP Tim Morris told Lloyd’s List.

British Ports Association chief executive Richard Ballantyne, said his organisation was expecting controls to come in as planned.

“Ports are good to go in terms of physical infrastructure. Border control posts, which have been built at pace and are over-spec and over-designed, are ready to go,” he said.

Ballantyne explained that many ports had built border control posts at huge cost and were actually keen to start using them and recover some cost.

Although shipping companies themselves will not be directly impacted by any delay or change in the import check process, Morris warned against a scenario where some ports in the UK had differing levels of checks than others.

A situation where a perceived advantage could be gained by using a particular port, he said, should be avoided.

Both Ballantyne and Morris expressed frustration with the way the whole process of implementing Brexit checks had been managed.

“We have been disappointed and frustrated over a period of years about how border regime has developed or not in the UK, having acted and invested millions of pounds at early stage to meet deadlines that have moved backwards a number of times,” Morris said.

“We remain concerned about the potential for regulatory treatment to inadvertently constrain choices of UK businesses and distort supply chain flows”.

Ballantyne said the BPA was still seeking clarification on details surrounding charges for import checks, namely who is going to pay, just weeks before the import checks went live. 

He called the entire implementation of final stage border checks “shambolic” and said the BPA wanted the Cabinet Office to take a stronger role in this saga as Defra “are obviously overwhelmed by the situation”.

In a statement today, Defra said it was “confident we have sufficient capacity and capability across all points of entry to handle the volume and type of expected checks” and maintained that “the cost of our border checks is negligible compared to the impact of a major disease outbreak on our economy and farmers”.