Dover traffic HELL leaves family stuck for 22 HOURS in ‘unimaginable’ port chaos

Cars queue at the check-in at the Port of Dover in Kent

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Alexandra Sievert, from Switzerland, was stranded for nearly an entire day to return home via France from a holiday in Cornwall. As tens of thousands of cars waited to be processed in Dover over the weekend, Ms Sievert described the situation as “unimaginable”.

She said: “We were stuck in the queue for about 22 hours in total to catch the train to France.

“The heat is brutal when you sit in the car for hours and can’t do anything.”

The Swiss woman said she had walked about three kilometres to get a drink, as according to Ms Sievert no water was distributed to those trapped in miles of tailbacks.

“The worst thing,” Ms Sievert told national outlet Blick, “is that we received no information. No emails, no phone calls, not even the police do anything.”

A Port of Dover spokesman said there is still a “long way to go” to clear the backlog of vehicles on the M20 in Kent.

POLL: Should Britain pay France to sort out Dover travel chaos?

In Dover, lines began forming at around 4am on Saturday, with some 17,215 cars processed by lunchtime – far exceeding Friday’s 8,500. On Sunday, the figure had reached 72,000 vehicles.

Border and ferry staff worked “through the night” to clear “huge volumes of tourist and freight traffic” so that services at Dover were finally able to “get back to normal by the early hours of Sunday morning”, a port spokesperson said.

They added: “We should not have been in this situation in the first place, however.”

In Folkestone, the chaos continued.

Highways England warned of “severe delays”, while drivers reported average speeds of just 5mph in some places.

Jack Cousens, head of roads policy at the AA, said: “Dover has now recovered, but Folkestone has become the hotspot of holiday hell.

“Drivers are now trying to find alternative routes down to the Eurotunnel terminal at J11a on the M20. Holidaymakers are trying to use the M2 and then find ways to ‘drop down’ into the A20 and the terminal via the back roads.

“Drivers heading to Folkestone need to be prepared.”

The long delays have been linked to slow border checks, Brexit, massive numbers of travellers setting out at the start of the school summer holidays, as well as the usual flow of goods lorries.

The UK Government blames a shortage of French border staff and the French government argues passport checks are taking longer now that the UK is no longer part of the European Union.

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Doug Bannister, the Port of Dover’s chief executive, previously blamed French border control officials, Police aux Frontières, for failing to provide sufficient numbers to staff the passport booths.

Only four of nine booths for the French border controls for travellers leaving the UK were reported to have been staffed on Friday morning, which port officials say led to the backlogs.

The French dismissed this.

On Sunday, Mr Bannister thanked travellers and the town’s residents for their understanding “during this challenging period”.

He said: “I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has turned this situation around, from the French and UK authorities to our ferry operators, Kent partners and our own port staff.”

Vehicles are flowing freely on Monday but people hoping to cross the Channel to France this weekend are being warned it will be very busy again.

Toby Howe, from the Kent Resilience Forum, said the situation was currently “very vulnerable” and it took little to cause congestion.

He said the coming weekend was expected to be the second busiest getaway weekend of the summer holidays and, with Channel traffic back to pre-pandemic levels and additional checks at the border since Brexit, it took “very little” to cause trouble.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Howe stressed the need for better resources: “You only need another crash on the road or maybe a train breakdown or a power failure somewhere for it to then become a big problem.

“We shouldn’t really have to have queues of traffic due to all of this, so we need more infrastructure in place.”

Additional reporting by Maria Ortega

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