Reported by The Guardian
Five of seven facilities in England and Wales never reached operational stage as Tories vacillated over plans to check goods
The UK wasted at least £100m in taxpayers’ money to set up zombie Brexit border inspection posts that were never used, it has been revealed.
The overall cost of Brexit was put at an estimated £4.7bn by the National Audit Office last year but this included years-long transformation of the software used for customs declarations and other systems built to cope with the UK leaving the single market.
More from the original report
Now fresh information from HMRC on the exact spend on the seven “inland border facilities” has come to light. The sites were built but quickly decommissioned as the Conservative government at the time vacillated over plans to check goods coming in from the continent.
Five of the seven “inland border facilities” in England and Wales never got to operational stage because the Tories decided not to implement all the border checks after concluding food coming from the EU would be the same high standard as it was before Brexit.
Portsmouth port, which is owned by the city council, spent £23m on building its border control post, which has never been used at full capacity because of the decision to scale back the checks.
The port received £17.1m in government funding for the project, leaving the council to make up the £6m shortfall, which could otherwise have been spent on essential services.
The EU launched all the checks in Calais, Dublin and other European ports from day one as the UK was treated as a “third country” overnight. The most controversial British zombie facility was known as “Dover white cliffs”. Furious residents at the village of Guston were told of the plans for the inland border facility on 31 December 2020, just hours before a “transition year” ended and Brexit was due to be implemented with supposed checks on all lorries coming across the Channel.
Information from HMRC, released under a freedom of information request, shows the facility has so far cost the taxpayer £28m, even though it remains a field. The Department…