The lorry park, officially named as the White Cliffs Inland Border Facility, is to be located alongside the A2 in Kent, near to the villages of Guston and Whitfield. The site was supposed to be around 37.6 hectares in size.

However, the project has been plagued by problems since it was announced at the turn of the year. There have been protests from local residents, while the construction of the facility has been delayed by around 9 months.

In January, around 1,600 people signed a petition against the lorry park on change.org, the reasoning for which was as follows:

The Government is seeking to create an additional Inland Border Facility in Guston to accommodate new custom and border controls commencing from 1 July 2021. Fields in the village of Guston, have been earmarked for this new customs checkpoint which will be sited adjacent to family homes. Local residents and our community are devastated with these plans which will be detrimental to village way of life, imposing noise, air and light pollution from the 1200 lorries that could use the facility. Guston is a peaceful historic hamlet and an area of outstanding natural beauty and allowing a lorry clearance site in the village centre will slaughter of our way of life enabling the Government to rob community privacy and our residents entitlement to live peacefully.

Now it appears that the Guston Brexit lorry park will be tiny compared to the original plans. According to the Guardian, it will hold just 96 trucks, with an additional 20 extra for reversing lorries.

In a letter seen by the Guardian, Guston Parish Council also revealed that HMRC has promised residents a number of measures to minimise disruption from the lorry park. Besides the facility being 25% smaller in size, it will come with “moonlight” lighting (following complaints about the bright lighting at the Sevington inland border facility) as well as artificial hills that will minimise noise and make for a nicer view.

Further checks necessitated by the UK Government’s Brexit plans are due to enter into force this coming October and January, long before the Guston lorry park will be ready. As a result, lorries will have to go elsewhere. The Guardian understands that checks on chilled and frozen food will be moved to an undisclosed site in nearby Whitfield – subject to negotiations being completed by procurement officials.

Two other sites are also possibilities, including an empty warehouse that would conduct inspections on refrigerated trucks with suspicious goods.

However, although the implementation of Brexit good checks is still scheduled to go ahead as normal, many believe they will have to be delayed again due to a lack of readiness.

Last week, the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC) claimed that the UK is “not ready” to introduce sanitary and phytosanitary controls on EU goods in October. Tim Reardon, company secretary and head of EU exit at the Port of Dover, has also appeared to suggest that delay may be required, telling the Guardian:

“Building infrastructure takes time and the government needs to factor that into its timescales for new border controls. It also needs to tell the logistics industry what inland border sites will be available and when, so that the army of businesses that make up the UK’s supply chain know what they are dealing with.”

Photo credit: UK Department for Transport (left) + Twitter (right)