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Kent’s truck park, designed to ease the queues for up to 7,000 trucks carrying goods across the English Channel, will not be Brexit ready on January 1, it has been discovered.
Damian Green, the Ashford MP, said he was told by the government that rain had hampered work on the site between the villages of Sevington and Mersham, fueling fears of traffic queues around the county for the first two months of the year. .
“They have said it should be for a maximum of up to eight weeks starting in January, so it should be finished by the end of February, but they are committed to the Sevington site as a permanent base,” he told Kent Online.
The site was acquired by the government in July and is to act as a holding yard for trucks queuing to enter Dover and possibly leave the port and also to allow HM Revenue & Customs to conduct checks.
Green said another site would now be used. “Due to the rain, they are going to lift the nearby Waterbrook site and operate it as a common transit convention site. HMRC activities that would have taken place in Sevington will take place there instead, ”he said.
Heavy rains in recent weeks have meant a race against time to finish the truck park and work continues around the clock.
The Department of Transportation confirmed that it will now shift initial controls to Waterbrook.
The northern end of Sevington Park was to be used by HMRC and the southern portion next to Mersham was designed to accommodate up to 1,700 trucks in the event of a traffic jam at the port and the Eurotunnel gateways at Dover and Folkestone.
“Beginning January 1, customs checks will be conducted on heavy vehicles at the Ashford Waterbrook site before permanently moving to the Sevington site in February 2021,” said a spokesperson.
“The Sevington site will open as planned on January 1 to manage traffic in the event of an outage.”
Local residents have expressed concern about increased noise, pollution and traffic.
Liz Wright, Green Party Councilor for the adjacent Willesborough district, said: “We still can’t find out who is monitoring pollution and traffic. We are concerned that contamination levels were already illegally high at Junction 10. “
