Residents of the village of Guston in Kent have staged a socially distant demonstration in protest at the UK Government’s decision to build a Brexit lorry park on nearby farmland.
The lorry park, officially named as the White Cliffs Inland Border Facility, is located alongside the A2 in Kent, near to the villages of Guston and Whitfield. The site is approximately 37.6 hectares in size and will be able to accomodate 1,200 trucks.
Guston’s local priest told The Guardian yesterday that the UK Transport Secretary was guilty of a “clear abuse of power” due to the lack of notice and consultation regarding the plans for the lorry park.
The same newspaper reports that one pensioner in the village was „almost in tears” over the prospect of hundreds of lorries driving by his property on a daily basis.
Some other residents in the village have said the lorry park „will make their lives a nightmare” according to the BBC’s Lauren Moss.
The govt is proposing to build a customs checking site in the village of Guston, Dover to begin checking animals/feed imports from July. It’s very close to this property – I filmed from the back garden. Residents say it’ll make their lives a nightmare & are proposing alternatives pic.twitter.com/7hKIobXqbk
— Lauren Moss (@LaurenM0ss) January 19, 2021
Around 1,600 people have signed a petition against the lorry park on change.org, the reasoning for which reads 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.