Road Haulage Association blames government failure, such as the launch of the key ‘Goods Vehicle Movement Service’ IT system on 23 December – just eight days before a new, and still unknown, UK-EU trading relationship begins.
Although some commentators are more optimistic, the UK’s Road Haulage Association (RHA) is predicting “something between a shambles and a catastrophe” when Britain’s Brexit transition period from European Union (EU) rules ends on 31 December and the UK is no longer part of the EU’s customs and trade structure.
The association is pointing the finger of blame at poor preparations by the British government, which it believes has left the freight transport industry – and business in general – in a state of unreadiness with the new trading framework less than a fortnight away.
“We’re not optimistic for 1 January and have been saying for an awfully long time now that we don’t have faith in how the government has gone about handling the situation,” the trade body’s managing director of policy, Rod McKenzie, told Lloyd’s Loading List in an interview.
“If you take the IT side of things, for example, it won’t be until 23 December that most of us will get a chance to look at the Goods Vehicle Movement Service (GVMS) – the UK government’s border control information technology system for coordinating the movement of vehicles – which is eight days before a deal or no deal Brexit. If that’s not a very, very bad situation to be in, what is?
Between a shambles and a catastrophe
“We’ve been warning the government for the past four years to get this IT system ready but that’s still not the case at this very late stage. It’s hard to see a positive outcome here and we’re heading for something between a shambles and a catastrophe.”
Faced with the likelihood of disruption to supply chains come 1 January – the scale of which is difficult to predict – the RHA “is calling for easements that say, ‘the transition period will end but give us an implementation period during which we have a bit more time to adapt to the changes’. It amounts to common sense,” McKenzie said.
The government has hinted that it will be giving firms some slack over the border controls in the first six months of next year, but McKenzie is worried about how accommodating the “interpretation” of the new rules will be in the initial phase on the other side of the Channel –especially in a no-deal scenario.
“For instance, if it doesn’t go well between the UK and the EU over fishing, how will the French authorities react? We just don’t know the answer to any of this yet.”
EU driver fears
Turning to the RHA’s anecdotal evidence that some EU nationality drivers – who are behind the wheel on the vast majority of trucks plying cross-Channel routes – would “not bother” with driving in the UK in the new year, fearing no-deal chaos, therefore creating a potentially serious shortage of truck/driver capacity, he noted: “While we don’t have any hard proof or examples or figures on this, we can point to more than a handful of conversations with individual hauliers who’ve said they know of instances where European drivers are choosing not to do the cross-Channel route for the very simple and very good reason that they don’t know how long it will take them because the whole border situation is unclear.
“Despite a lack of firm data, it’s very much a story, particularly among those who rely on European lorry drivers one way or another.”
McKenzie said it appeared to be more the crossing back from Dover that’s putting off haulage firms and drivers rather than the ex-Calais leg.
“The UK has made it clear that it is not going to enforce borders, deal or no deal, until July 2021; but this has not prevented plenty of talk among lorry drivers about queues at Dover and massive backlogs of HGV traffic. The reality is even if you’ve got all the right paperwork if you’re caught in a traffic jam, you’re caught in a traffic jam.
Paperwork fears
“And then there’s the fear over big loads on trucks with lots of different packages. If you get one piece of paperwork wrong on one of those shipments your whole load is then diverted to a lorry park in Kent, Warrington, north of Birmingham, or wherever and you have to wait 72 hours before you get an access permit to exit and be given the green light to cross the Channel.
“And that is a game which is too hard to play for some of these drivers who are asking themselves why they should be doing this when they can do a run from Germany to Madrid, say, or short trips between France and Belgium.”
He continued: “Essentially, it’s a matter of ‘time is money’ for hauliers. You just don’t want to have a driver who could be productive on several journeys stranded on a so-called lorry park in England. Why would you do that?
“That’s what we’re up against here. The government has not been able to reassure people that this won’t happen, which is not good.”
With EU nationality drivers probably accounting for anything between 60% and 80% of the pool of truck drivers operating on routes to and from the UK, a growing reluctance on their part to cross the Channel would have serious implications for the country’s import and export trade, he added.
Logistics UK more hopeful
However, fellow UK freight transport association Logistics UK has expressed hopes that there could be only minimal Brexit freight border delays from January after Britain’s Brexit transition from EU rules ends if a new government initiative targeting high-value UK-EU cross-border traders is successful.
Although surveys and anecdotal reports continue to highlight a lack of preparedness for the new trading conditions from 1 January among large numbers of the estimated 145,000 UK companies that are currently trade between Great Britain and the European Union, the association is hopeful that are targeted effort at preparing bigger import and export companies for the changes could be successful.
Alex Veitch, general manager for public policy at Logistics UK, said he does worry when he hears about traders that haven’t been paying attention to the information about the need to prepare for the new customs and trading environment.
“I know that the (UK) government is focussing on what they call ‘high-value traders’,” said Veitch. “So, there are about 10,000 or 11,000 businesses who account for about 90% of our trade by value with the EU. And the government is going hammer and tongs to get those businesses as ready as possible. And that’s fantastic, because if they can be ready, then we may see minimal delays.”
He has some sympathy with smaller trading companies that still believe that a trade deal between the UK and the EU “is going to solve all these issues; and it won’t: you will need to do customs declarations either way. Even for these first six months of imports, where we will have an easier time at our borders. So please, check out Gov.UK, get your paperwork ready, because it’s all systems go from 1 January.”
Veitch highlighted three issues – “three Cs” – that are already “contributing to the congestion that we’re seeing at the minute” already at some UK ports and freight facilities: Covid, Christmas and Customs.
“So, we are in the in the middle of the Covid pandemic, obviously, and that has disrupted supply chains around the world and created a disruption to what is usually quite a stable, predictable flow of demand. The second part is Christmas, the busiest time of year in logistics.
“The third C, customs will come in from 1 January, with or without a deal, there will be a need to do customs declarations – because our government decided some years ago to leave the (EU) customs union. That means that there must be customs declarations done with anything that we are importing or exporting to or from the EU.
“And so, what we’re finding is that businesses are stockpiling to some extent and bringing goods into the UK ahead of the 1 January deadline.”
Source: Lloyd’s
