Brexit continues to provide Britain with many transitional obstacles. One of those obstacles has been highlighted as UK ports appear to have had enough, reached breaking point – and are now demanding compensation from the British government after a delay in implementing post-Brexit border checks by a further 18 months.

These border checks port businesses with empty high-tech facilities that have cost millions that they have described as tech “white elephants”.

Border checks threaten to create all manner of problems for the UK so the government, for the fourth time, has delayed checks on EU animal and plant products until at least the end of 2023. It was announced just at the point where many UK ports were ready to implement government-ordered border control posts for what was supposed to be the final start date in time for border checks on July 1st this year.

According to UK Major Ports Group, the trade body for the largest port operators, the ports industry has spent £100million to construct the new border facilities, with an additional £200million provided by post-Brexit government grants via the Port Infrastructure Fund.

Tim Morris, CEO of the UK Major Ports Group said “Many ports have been working incredibly hard and have invested over £100 million of their own money to build a network of brand new border checks to meet the requirements the Government has been insisting on for several years. This now looks like wasted time, effort, and money to develop what we fear will be highly bespoke white elephants. The government needs to engage urgently with ports to agree how the substantial investments made in good faith can be recovered.”

Last week, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the ‘Brexit Opportunities Minister’ said the delay would save industry overall £1bn which would help control the looming cost of living crisis. It was seen by many political commentators as an admission by one of Brexit’s most ardent supporters that leaving the EU trading bloc is a failure due to the scale of red tape, delays and additional cost it has caused.

In the same week, it was reported that although UK exports to the EU had recovered to somewhere around pre-pandemic levels, analysis of trading data showed the number of business relationships between buyers and sellers had crashed by a third after the introduction of the EU-UK trade deal in January 2021.