Industrial action by many Border Force staff is scheduled to begin on Friday 17th February 2023. It is planned to continue through the last weekend of the February half-term holiday, Saturday 18th, Sunday 19th and to end at 0700hrs on Monday 20th February. Many UK-based Home Office staff who are members of the Public & Commercial Services (PCS) union will strike, including many Border Force staff. 

As with other sources of disruption this industrial action is likely to affect freight traffic moving through ports including short-sea traffic between Dover, Calais and Dunkirk as well as Coquelles Eurotunnel Terminal and the Inland Border facilities at Sevington and elsewhere. The PCS itself expects up to 1000 Border Force officers to strike (see its announcement here). There are also strikes in France this week that travellers and freight transporters should be aware of. 

Harbour Shipping has many contacts with Border Force and HMRC and one of our sources has advised the following:

“Whilst we can’t predict the level of support for the industrial action this weekend we have planned for a worst case scenario. We have worked with HMRC and our own Border Force agency staff (who will not be on strike) to ensure we have a decent level of cover across the weekend. This also includes the deployment of contingency BF resources, who have been trained to cover basic international trade roles.  We may have to delay some activities which require more or specially trained resources until after the weekend but these will be in a very small number of cases, if any. Obviously the message to hauliers to consider whether to reorganise a movement to avoid these days should reduce traffic levels and protect the sites' operations (Inland Border Facilities), so overall we anticipate that day-to-day activity such as office of departure will continue, with perhaps only a slightly longer processing time.”

Harbour Shipping therefore envisages there will be delays to some but NOT ALL traffic requiring Customs clearance through the weekend 17th-20th February 2023.

• Exports - We only envisage slightly longer processing times for Outbound Transit (T-form) movements but at this time we do not foresee significant delays.
• Imports - From an import perspective anything needing a Customs paperwork check or a physical examination will more than likely be delayed but these interventions are few and far between.

Harbour Shipping will do our utmost – as you would expect – to help our clients minimise or avoid any adverse effects from this industrial action.

We will send further updates should they be required but our teams are here on hand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and we will do our utmost to keep freight moving.