In an article expressing the port organisation\u2019s views on the UK Government\u2019s customs proposals, Richard Ballantyne, the BPA\u2019s chief executive, said that the partnership choice \u201cwould create a framework where goods crossing the Irish border could continue uninterrupted and allows the UK to negotiate new trade deals with countries outside the EU\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe customs partnership proposal offers the advantage of maintaining \u2018business as usual\u2019 for goods and this would appear to be the only proposal where freight is not subject to new customs controls at those ports dealing with EU traffic,\u201d said Mr Ballantyne.<\/p>\n
On May 16, the UK newspaper the Daily Express<\/em> said that there was \u201cdeadlock\u201d in the UK Cabinet over the preferred customs arrangement with the EU after the UK\u2019s departure from the multinational body.<\/p>\n Potential congestion<\/strong><\/p>\n In his article, Mr Ballantyne said that adapting to life outside the EU\u2019s customs union \u201cwill be manageable and relatively straightforward\u201d for a lot of the UK\u2019s ports and that docks handling containers or bulk loads should be able to adjust infrastructure, systems and procedures relatively easily.<\/p>\n However, when it came to transport on lorries through ro-ro ferry ports, the chief executive said that \u201cthe prospect of lorries being stopped for customs purposes at the border remains daunting\u201d.<\/p>\n At these docks \u2014 which include the likes of Portsmouth and Dover \u2014 business models are based around traffic moving freely through the port gate, but with new requirements to approve each vehicle\u2019s customs declarations before they enter the UK and depart to the EU, traffic could build rapidly in and around these ports.<\/p>\n The local area surrounding these facilities could possibly become very congested, with stoppages representing inefficiencies and hold-ups increasing costs for manufacturers and consumers, Mr Ballantyne also said.<\/p>\n The chief executive claimed that UK ro-ro ports do not generally have readily-available facilities for customs declarations checks and that due to their almost-exclusive handling of EU traffic, customs examinations have not had to be undertaken for decades and large amounts of space are not available for such work.<\/p>\n Mr Ballantyne also argued in his article that the UK Government\u2019s other main customs option, a highly-streamlined customs arrangement, or maximum facilitation (max fac), is essentially the UK\u2019s setup for non-EU or \u201c\u2018third-country\u2019\u201d traffic but with new digital and physical infrastructure, particularly at ro-ro ports, which would need a lot of border preparation for both the UK Government plus \u201cthe relevant parts of the industry\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The British Ports Association (BPA) has backed the idea of a customs partnership as the UK\u2019s post-Brexit customs setup, saying that it \u201clooks to be the [UK Government option on the table for new customs arrangements] that will have least impact at the border\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}