Published: Less than 50 min ago
Thousands of Britons wanting to celebrate Easter in mainland Europe got stuck in Dover on Saturday. Many of them are forced to spend the night in the southern English port city.
During Saturday, the waiting time in Dover was up to 14 hours, according to several victims that the BBC and Sky News spoke to.
Port manager Doug Bannister told Sky News the delays were due to an unexpected number of lorries queuing to get onto the ferries after a storm on Friday caused major delays.
Late on Saturday, he told the BBC that the ferry companies will deploy extra ferries to Calais during the night.
The ferry company P&O Ferries regrets the delays but states that the waiting times are not as long as the media claim. The company writes on Twitter that there is a wait of up to four hours to enter the port and then even longer inside the port.
After Brexit, waiting times at British ports have become much longer, and bureaucracy still puts obstacles in the way of smooth border crossing. Saturday’s chaos also reached politics as Labor leader Keir Starmer urged the government to resolve the recurring problems:
“We can’t have it like this every summer holiday and every Easter. So the government needs to get over this and actually help people,” he said in a statement.