Essex councillor accused of "covering for his government's incompetence"
The comments, from Labour group leader Ivan Henderson come amid concerns of additional pressure on Harwich port post-brexit
The scale of the challenges facing Harwich after the Brexit transition ends has led to accusations that a senior Essex Council Council (ECC) cabinet member has been failing to act decisively.
The accusations from Labour group leader Ivan Henderson come as Kevin Bentley, deputy leader of ECC, spoke of the additional pressures the likes of Harwich will be facing after the transition period ends in 2021.
He was speaking in his role as chairman of the EU Exit Taskforce for the Local Government Association.
To provide a sense of scale a Tendring district council cabinet report has highlighted that there are around 527 lorries and trailers incoming at Harwich daily, carrying a total of around 7,700 tonnes of goods.
Currently, the imported food control at Tendring ports is carried out by Suffolk Coastal Port Health Authority (SCPHA) on behalf of Tendring Port Health Authority. This is a low scale service as the majority of incoming goods are from the EU and not subjected to any checks or inspection regime.
From July 2021 it is estimated that up to 22,334 import consignments will contain products subject to port health controls.
Currently around only 23 meet the criteria.
The report adds that the greatest financial implications come from the increased monitoring, physical checks and sampling of goods arriving from the EU at the port.
These are all chargeable services, based on a scale of rates set by Government and payable by hauliers/importers to the Port Health Authority, which Tendring is the lead on.
In the current scenario SCPHA collects these fees and there are very few physical checks and sampling is extremely rare.
In order to undertake the increased requirements, SCPHA has estimated that it needs to employ around 60 additional members of staff across both Harwich and Felixstowe, 40 of whom will need to have specialist training/qualifications.
An additional annual cost of £3.6 million has been estimated for this staffing requirement.
Based on shipping consignment projections Harwich will require 59 per cent of this resource at a cost of £2.1 million per year.
Commenting on the National Audit Office report predicting border disruption when the EU transition period ends, Cllr Bentley admitted that port health authorities – councils which are legally responsible for undertaking checks of certain food and feed products, and live animals, as they enter the country – will be facing significant new additional responsibilities and this additional work required to prepare the UK border for the end of the transition period will be “extremely challenging”.
“Councils need urgent support from the government to provide help with recruiting more staff to do these additional checks, as well as preparing local roads and other infrastructure for the impact of new local transit points for ports. We have raised these issues with the government this week and will continue to work with them to make sure our exit from the EU is as smooth as possible,” he said.
However Cllr Henderson has questioned why now after months of warnings Cllr Bentley has asked for more help.
He said ECC argues that in just over eight weeks the transition period ends, but only this week has the council decided to make contact with the government – for help with specialist trained staff, infrastructure and additional checks at ports.
“Cllr Bentley should have treated this issue with the urgency it deserved and not keep covering for his government’s incompetence.” Cllr Henderson said.
Details are still emerging from the government about the extent of the checks that will be required at Harwich, but working on a worst case scenario basis the service at Harwich will need to be scaled up to 80 per cent of the current Felixstowe capacity. Capacity at Felixstowe will also need to increase.
The Tendring District Council report added that in order to facilitate the additional checks, infrastructure and facilities are required.
“The current facilities for food checks at Harwich Port are very old and have not been used to any degree for many years. The new regime requires completely new infrastructure that will be provided by the port using funding they will be bidding for from government. Facilities need to be up and running by July 1 2021,” it says.
Cllr Henderson added: “Infrastructure such as cold storage is inadequate and there are no plans to cover this.”
ECC was asked to comment.