UK spent at least £100m on unused Brexit border inspection posts

The UK spent at least £100m of taxpayers' money building Brexit border inspection posts that were never used, newly released figures have shown.

The National Audit Office last year estimated the overall cost of Brexit at £4.7bn, a figure that covered years of work transforming customs declaration software and other systems needed for life outside the single market. Now fresh information from HMRC, released under a freedom of information request, has detailed the exact spend on seven inland border facilities in England and Wales. Five of the seven sites never became operational after the Conservative government of the time decided not to implement all planned checks on goods from the continent, concluding that food from the EU would meet the same high standard as before Brexit.

The most controversial of the so-called zombie facilities was known as Dover white cliffs. Residents of the village of Guston were told of plans for the site on 31 December 2020, just hours before the transition year ended. HMRC figures show the facility has so far cost £28m despite remaining a field: the Department for Transport paid £21m to procure the land and spent a further £7m on initial ground works, including an archaeological survey for Roman remains.

A further £17m went on a facility planned for a car park at Birmingham airport, which cost £11m to build and £6m in closure costs. The Warrington site, on the former Shearings holidays coach stop at Appleton Thorn, was chosen because there were no suitable sites for lorries arriving from Ireland at Liverpool, Holyhead and Heysham. Vehemently opposed by local people, it cost £7m to buy, £9m to build and £1m to decommission. At Ebbsfleet, the former car park at the Eurostar international station cost £4m to convert into a lorry park and £6m to close, while a site at North Weald airfield off the M11, commandeered to avert congestion on the M25, cost £3m to build and £2m to shut down.

HMRC said the Birmingham, Ebbsfleet and North Weald sites did not require the acquisition of land. The decision to build lorry parks so far from Dover underlined the lack of preparation for departure from the EU, with the area around the port ruled out because of its protected landscape status.

The UK eventually opted for a site 20 miles inland at Sevington in Kent. The government has previously revealed that total capital costs there ran to £154m, including £30m to acquire farmland between Sevington and Mersham and £70m to build. HMRC has now disclosed that operational costs have reached £179m. The only other site still operational is Holyhead, which handles goods from Ireland and cost £14m to acquire and £23m to build.

The figures are separate from spending by Eurotunnel, the Port of Dover and other ports. Eurotunnel spent €50m (£41.7m) on infrastructure for truck checks and €90m on passenger changes, including an entry and exit system never activated by the French.

Portsmouth, the UK's second-busiest cross-Channel port, spent £23m building its border control post, of which £17.1m came from government funding, leaving the city council, which owns the port, to cover a £6m shortfall. The facility has never operated at full capacity and now faces an uncertain future: an average of two trailer checks take place each day, compared with the 80 originally envisioned.

Port director Mike Sellers said: 'Given the border post's location within the operational port, ideally we would look to repurpose it rather than demolish it, but it will cost us almost as much to repurpose as to demolish. It was bespoke and built for food import checks and biosecurity, it is not suitable for general warehousing and will have to be changed.' Sellers and Portsmouth city council's leader are among those calling on the government to compensate ports for border posts that will become redundant when the UK government's deal with the EU comes into force.