In the aftermath of a particularly complicated day due to a lack of French border police personnel, access to the British port of Dover is still difficult this Saturday, due to major holiday departures.

"It's very, very busy," said Saturday morning on BBC Radio 4 Roger Gough, chairman of the county of Kent (south-east of England).

Nearly 10,000 cars expected

From 5 a.m. (3 a.m. GMT) on Saturday, the 12 passport control posts were staffed with French border police officers, the director general of the port of Dover, Dough Bannister, said on BBC Radio 4.

He pointed out that additional checks due to Brexit increase delays in boarding.

But to the crowds of this day which already promised to be “considerably busy”, is added the delay accumulated on Friday, he underlined.

Thus, 8,500 cars boarded on Friday and 10,000 are expected on Saturday, he added, when the school holidays begin in most establishments in England and Wales.

But according to Kent County's Roger Gough, access to the Channel Tunnel is also being delayed due to storage on the M20 motorway, which provides access to the south east coast of England, 3,000 trucks, as part of a system implemented in the event of congestion at the border.

Monster traffic jams on Friday

British authorities railed against the monster traffic jams created by a shortage of Border Patrol personnel at the port of Dover on Friday morning.

Deeming the situation “unacceptable”, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, campaigning to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson, urged France on Friday to take “measures to increase capacity at the border and limit further disruption for tourists. British, and avoid this dreadful situation in the future".

On the French side, the regional prefect Georges-François Leclerc invoked “an unforeseeable technical incident in the Channel Tunnel”, which “led the French border police” to “shift the desired full operational capacity by one hour” Friday morning .

A causal link disputed by Eurotunnel, which denies any responsibility for the situation at the port of Dover and argues that the “minor” signaling problem which affected the tunnel occurred well after the difficulties began.

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