Richard Ballantyne, chief executive of the BPA, also announced intentions to promote planning and freight policy reform, increased transport connectivity investment and a legal change to the \u2018definition of a ship\u2019, as he outlined the Association\u2019s key priorities for 2018.<\/p>\n
Mr Ballantyne said: \u201cWe will continue (to) ensure that as important international gateways, the ports industry features in the Government\u2019s Brexit planning, particularly in relation to any new customs and environmental arrangements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bureaucratic fears<\/strong><\/p>\n He explained that some ports are concerned that bureaucratic border checks could slow down trade following the UK\u2019s departure from the EU Customs Union and Single Market. Therefore, the BPA therefore intend to lobby the UK Government to promote trade facilitation discussions.<\/p>\n The BPA will continue to push for areas around ports to be classified with a special planning and consenting status to help stimulate port development and growth.<\/p>\n It is also encouraging policy makers to ensure that port activity and development are not negatively impacted by onerous consenting conditions and marine protection designations, given that many of the rules in relation to environmental legislation stem from the EU.<\/p>\n Freight investment<\/strong><\/p>\n The BPA last year called for a new UK freight strategy and will be pressing the Government to prioritise freight transport infrastructure to keep the sector competitive and reduce costs for the freight and logistics industry.<\/p>\n The BPA said it hopes the Department for Transport\u2019s Port Connectivity Study to prioritise port development for funding and added opportunities to discuss development would also be presented at the National Infrastructure Commission\u2019s Freight Assessment and the Scottish National Transport Strategy Review.<\/p>\n Maritime safety will also be prioritised, with an expectation that progress will be made to making legislative updates to overcome the \u2018definition of a ship\u2019 legal irregularity, to enable ports to enforce port safety rules against certain leisure craft which are currently not classified as a \u2018ship\u2019 under UK law.<\/p>\n Air quality<\/strong><\/p>\n Other areas of importance outlined by the BPA include Northern Irish issues in relation to Brexit, new ports \u2018Good Governance Guidelines\u2019 in England and Wales, fisheries management and a policy approach to air quality.<\/p>\n The BPA announced it will be developing a new membership development strategy to help grow and develop the Association\u2019s national profile and reach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The British Ports Association (BPA) will continue to engage with Brexit negotiators and seek to influence discussions in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":11373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-11372","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\/11372","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=11372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11374,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11372\/revisions\/11374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11372"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=11372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}