A horrified mum has spoken out after her son and his friends were stuck at the Port of Dover for 16 hours in the Easter holiday getaway chaos. Gillian Charlton said her son Ned’s nightmare started at around 7.30pm on Saturday on a coach in the queue for passport control.
After waiting 14 hours as the coach crawled ever closer to a ferry, it was then stuck for two hours without moving.
Thirteen-year-old Ned and his friends were supposed to be heading to Pila in the Aosta Valley, Italy, for a skiing trip.
And Ms Charlton says everyone on the coach was starving after only being offered a KitKat at midnight.
The social care worker, from Chorley, Lancashire, said: “It’s shambolic.
“I don’t think they have access to running water and can’t get off – only to use the portaloo.
“They were given a KitKat at midnight.
“Children are feeling unsafe. They are all starving.”
Port of Dover authorities confirmed border processing times for coaches were around four hours.
Speak/showbiz/tv-radio/1753911/Sarah-Ferguson-single-life-relationship-admissioning yesterday, Ms Charlton, 43, said cars are “flying through” but hundreds of coaches are backed-up for miles.
She added: “I’m disgusted. My son said there are a hundred coaches behind them – and I think it’s mainly school kids.
“I sent him off with food for the day and they had breakfast vouchers to get food in France in the morning.
“I’m fuming. The fact that it’s mainly school children penned in.
“They should have restricted the bookings.
“They know how many people turn up at the ports. I’m so worried.”
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Extra sailings were run overnight on Saturday to try and clear the backlog.
By Sunday morning the port estimated some travellers would face waits of up to eight hours, depending on the ferry operator.
The Sun reports that early this morning Port of Dover authorities confirmed that “all coaches were cleared”.
In a statement the port said: “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.”
Home Secretary Suella Braverman told Sophy Ridge On Sunday on Sky News yesterday morning that it would not be fair to view the delays 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 downplayed any fears that delays at Dover could become a regular occurrence that risks ruining school holiday plans and suggested that in general “things have been operating very smoothly at the border”.
In 2021 new passport regulations came into force which state that French border control must check British passports in this country before travellers can cross the Channel.
