A lorry driver gestures as he enters the Port of Dover on January 1, the first day after the end of the Brexit transition period
Credit: Toby Melville/Reuters
There were no queues stretching back from the docks and no piles of perishable goods rotting on the back of lorries.
It may be tempting fate to say so but, when it came to the first day of post-Brexit cross-border trading, the much-predicted chaos failed to materialise.
The approach roads to Dover and the harbour itself, usually a hive of activity in and out of the country, were eerily quiet on the opening day of Britain’s new trading arrangements with the rest of Europe.
In a layby near Dover harbour, two Turkish lorry drivers, Oktay Yildiz and Ekrem Ozkul, were enjoying a roadside breakfast of bread, butter and warming tea before heading back across the Channel for the long drive home.
Having delivered a large consignment of Turkish jam to the UK on New Year’s Eve, the pair were waiting near freight clearance to cross back to France by ferry. Their only real problem appeared to be the cold snap hitting the South-East.
Mr Yildiz, 50, said: "We are drinking lots of tea to keep warm, but we believe it should be easy to get back over the border now.
"I do not expect any problems. We made sure we had all the right documents a long time ago as we were scared of no deal Brexit, but it all seems ok now. I have not heard anyone have issues so far, and we should be waved right through. It seems very quiet today, so hopefully it stays that way."
Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister, said no additional checks would be needed on cross-border movements between Northern Ireland and the Republic and that checks on goods coming from Britain into Northern Ireland would be "as limited as possible to protect the movement of goods and services within the United Kingdom as a whole".
Over at Calais, a handful of trucks disembarking from the Pride of Kent ferry were sent for additional checks while the others, who had to declare their goods online in advance, were allowed to pass through.
Other than a group of port and local officials and journalists, the day looked like any other at France’s busiest road freight port, which has expanded its lorry park to allow for trucks to wait for customs checks, hired 700 new customs officers and built new offices to deal with the new arrangements.
"If I had been sleeping for three days and no one had told me Brexit was today, I wouldn’t have noticed," Jean-Marc Puissesseau, the port’s director, said. "A lot of people think Brexit means bottlenecks at the border. It’s not true."
Trucks leave for Britain from the harbour at Calais, northern France on January 1
Credit: Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP
But there were signs that it won’t all be plain sailing on the high seas of Brexit.
Michal Perdion, 39, a Polish driver, was forced to wait at the Motis Freight Clearance Centre in Dover after arriving without the correct documents for his consignment of strawberries from Belgium.
His agency had expected that he would manage to cross the border before new import rules came into play, but the father of one missed the 11pm deadline by an hour.
Mr Perdion was forced to wait for his employer to arrange a T1 shipping note, the document used to transport goods between different customs regimes, before being able to unload at the Port.
"I need this document, which before Brexit I did not need," he said. "I don’t really know what to do now. My company is trying to call the office here but apparently it is closed. It’s terrible. I was scared there would be a problem because of Brexit, and now look what’s happened."
Other, relatively minor hiccups, were caused by many drivers appearing to be unaware of the fact they needed to provide a negative coronavirus test to be able to travel to France, including three Turkish lorry drivers and two Spanish hauliers.
Despite the rule being in place for more than a week, half of the drivers who arrived at Dover port in a 30-minute window on Friday were denied entry and diverted to Manston airfield for the necessary test. By 3pm, there were around 30 lorries parked up on the runway at the 700-acre site.
Road Haulage UK said early indications showed that traffic was slightly below usual, even for January 1, because many firms had stockpiled out of fear of a no-deal Brexit earlier in the year.
A spokesman said: "Traffic on the Dover-Calais route and Kent is quieter than usual. This time of the year is the quietest time of the year for imports and exports because we had Christmas. Also, suppliers and retailers were nervous about what was going to be happening this first week and firms stockpiled more before Christmas to get them through the early weeks of January."
However, Road Haulage UK warned that an increase in congestion at the port was likely as the volume of imports and exports returns to normal and the impact of Covid testing, additional restrictions and red tape became more visible.
"We will start to see the friction and traffic when the volumes begin to increase in about 10 days," the organisation said.
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