Queues clear at Dover after weekend of Easter holiday traffic chaos

Last night, the Port of Dover was still saying coaches faced a four-hour wait for processing (Picture: PA)

Long queues that caused hours-long waits at the Dover over the weekend have cleared, according the Kent town’s ferry port authority.

The traffic jams impacted many holidaymakers planning to visit the continent for the Easter break, with coaches particularly impacted.

Some passengers said they had been stuck for up to 16 hours, with hundreds sleeping in their seats on Friday night.

Heading into yesterday morning, the average wait for coaches to board a ferry was still 10 hours.

But this morning, P&O Ferries tweeted: ‘There are no longer any queues at the entrance to the Port of Dover.

‘We apologise for the wait times experienced this weekend.’

The Port of Dover confirmed all the coaches that were waiting for border processing had been cleared by 12.30am.

Earlier, it had said the A2 and A20 approach roads leading to the ferries were ‘running normally’.

All coaches that were awaiting border processing in the Port were cleared as of 00.30hrs this morning. Thank you for your patience while we got these vehicles on their journey and apologies for the inconvenience

— Port of Dover Travel (@PoD_travelnews) April 3, 2023

The port was running extra sailings overnight to try and get coach passengers across the English Channel, with officials saying they were ‘working round the clock’.

As the traffic chaos continued yesterday morning, Home Secretary Suella Braverman told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday that it was not fair to view it as ‘an adverse effect of Brexit’.

She said: ‘What I would say is at acute times when there is a lot of pressure crossing the Channel, whether that’s on the tunnel or ferries, then I think that there’s always going to be a back-up and I just urge everybody to be a bit patient while the ferry companies work their way through the backlog.’

She suggested that, in general, ‘things have been operating very smoothly at the border’.

On the same show, shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy said the delays were caused by a ‘range of factors’, but that the government had not planned for what would happen post-Brexit.

She said ministers had ‘known for a very long time that they needed to make sure that there were resources in place to deal with additional paperwork checks’.

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