Dealing with demand at Dover

Jonathan Welch speaks to Port of Dover CEO Doug Bannister and CPT’s Graham Vidler about how the port has addressed the issues which faced coaches earlier this year

There can’t be a single person in the UK who hasn’t heard of Dover, and doesn’t know of the vital role its port plays in moving traffic to and from continental Europe. A huge proportion of the UK population has probably passed through the port at some time or another, its famous white cliffs, topped with Dover Castle, receding into the distance or providing a welcome sight for those returning home.

It will come as no surprise that the Port of Dover is the busiest international ferry port in the UK, with two million cars and 11 million passengers passing through every year. That’s equivalent to a sixth of the UK population, or the entire population of Belgium, Sweden or Cuba. Added to that, of course, are the approximately 2.4 million trucks per year, more than all other UK ports, and £144bn of trade in goods, making up 33% of the UK’s trade with the EU. Not only that, but Dover is also the UK’s second busiest cruise port, welcoming more than 25 cruise ships and 200,000 cruise passengers each year.

What about coaches, you might ask. The demand there is more cyclical, and there’s certainly not 2.4 million of them per year, but they still represent a significant volume of business for the Port and its ferry operators DFDS, Irish Ferries and P&O. For the most part, coaches, like other traffic, passes through relatively easily, but unlike HGVs, the ‘cargo’ on board coaches is much more vocal and demanding when things go wrong, as happened at Easter when a combination of factors led to significant delays for outbound coaches, with some operators reporting 15-plus hour waits.

Thankfully, though maybe of little solace to those who were caught up in it at the time, the Port has worked hard to put new procedures in place to mitigate against any repeat of such scenes, and reports that the start of the peak summer holiday period saw traffic flowing much more smoothly.

Peak period

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Since the summer holidays commenced on Friday 21 July, 4,199 coaches (alongside 201,275 cars, carrying the bulk of the 859,239 passengers, and 96,525 freight vehicles) had passed through the South East port by 7 August. Significant preparation by the Port of Dover, ferry operators, and the Police aux Frontières saw average border processing times of 40 minutes on 21-23 July, the first weekend of the summer holidays, 35 minutes on the second and 23 minutes on the third, the Port reports, with the maximum processing time planned for of up to 2.5 hours confined to the morning of the busiest day, Saturday 29 July. Maximum waiting times of 90 minutes were reported across the other two peak weekends.

To find out more about what caused the delays earlier this year and how the Port has worked to improve the situation it has – through a combination of external factors – found itself in, I spoke to CEO Doug Bannister. We were also joined by CPT CEO Graham Vidler.

Setting the context for the well-publicised delays, Doug explained: “In 2018 on that same Easter weekend, we had about 820 coaches pass through. In 2019 on the same weekend, it was about 870. In 2020, it was three, in 2021 we had six. In 2022 we had 120, and then we were back to 820 for this year. What’s important is that we’d had a resurgence in tourist cars in 2022, so that gave us the ability to put infrastructure in place, but that return was only to about 60% of the pre-pandemic volumes. Coach traffic remained depressed during 2022 as the industry was still rebuilding itself.

“The other aspect that is important to note is that this was the first year that we were really testing post-Brexit border processes with a full volume of coach traffic. I think where it fell down was that the system – that is the ferry operators, the Police aux Frontières, Kent Police, National Highways as well as the Port of Dover, all of which have a role to play in planning for busy periods – underestimated the incremental time increase to get everything through.”

Unexpected

“The challenges we’ve had with other Channel crossings, particularly Eurotunnel, meant that as coach leisure travel rebounded, as it has done strongly this year, it needed an outlet to get across the Channel,” added Graham. “Eurotunnel had made it clear to us that there was less space for coaches than there had been previously, both through its pricing policy, with increases of up to two-thirds on some fares, and through its booking policy.

“That meant that we had a rebounding and growing market, and that was being funnelled into a much smaller space than was available previously, so we can quite understand how the demand must have felt from the Port’s point of view. Going into that pre-Easter weekend, we had no sense of what was about to come. From the perspective of our members, they’d booked with the ferry companies, they’d told the ferry companies when they were going to come, and they assumed they could be accommodated, and that didn’t turn out to be the case on that weekend.”

It should of course not be overlooked that the same issues were being faced by other ports around the country as demand surged, and the problem was by no means one limited to the Port of Dover. It was, however, the one which was most severely and noticeably affected due to the sheer volume of traffic it handles, being by far the most popular short crossing.

Initial response

“Our initial focus was to keep people safe and get them through as quickly as possible,” explained Doug, “and that’s what we tried to do. The following week, we spent a lot of time looking at what more we could do. We installed some new capacity in our buffer zone, which took advantage of infrastructure we had installed the year prior, and that increased capacity by around 60%.

“The following weekend it worked quite well and we processed everyone through the border in good order. We then spent a lot of time between Easter and the May half term on putting in place new plans, with an eye towards the summer season. That included more capacity for coach processing at the border. In all, we delivered 130% of additional capacity to the coach border process.

“We’ve also implemented an advance process for those coaches where the Port needs to undertake the advance passenger information collection on behalf of the ferry operators. We set up a system in the western part of the port to do that and to sequence coaches into the port.

“We’ve done lots more detailed planning too. In the past we were looking at a coach as a homogeneous entity, but when we started getting into the detail of it, some coaches were proceeding through very quickly and some were taking longer to process. We started looking at it in the context of ‘easy’ coaches versus ‘difficult’ coaches. An easy one would be a coach-load of EU school children, for example, which will go through a lot quicker than a mixed coach belonging to an international inter-city operator with lots of individual people on board going to different destinations. By being able to plan for the different natures of coaches, we were able to improve the overall process.

“The other thing we’ve done is to engage with the coach industry. We’ve had some very good engagement, certainly in the run up to the May half term. We had a briefing to make sure the coach sector was apprised of everything we’ve put in place. That’s helped to give us as a port a better understanding of the dynamics of the coach sector than we had before.”

New process

So what does the result of that engagement and planning look like for a coach travelling down the M20? “You’re first directed to a spot in the western docks, called the Old Boat Yard, where we’ve created extra capacity. Coaches pause there to check for any advance passenger information that we need to collect, and they are given a sequence number. Between our teams located there and our team in the eastern docks, we’ll decide when to release coaches to the terminal.

“There can be challenges if we have congestion on the approach road to the port, and in that case we might be more measured about when we release coaches. Once they’re in the port, there is a dedicated lane, which splits into three lanes for coach processing with a total of seven processing positions for the Police aux Frontières.

“At that point, the passengers need to disembark the coach and present themselves one at a time to the French immigration officers, and re-board. The coach can then proceed around through check-in.”

What has been the cost of all these changes, I wondered, and who picks up the tab? “Across our three main vehicle types, it requires some very detailed planning,” Doug explained. “We can allocate more or less space to each vehicle type as required. But by installing all this new capacity last year, we improved our car processing capacity by 50% last year, and coach capacity by 130%.

“That comes with a requirement that it’s fully manned at the times we need it. We’ve been working very closely with Police aux Frontières, and they’ve been fantastic in coming up with that. We provide an hour-by-hour forecast for every day during the summer, which allows them to plan their resources accordingly. They’ve given us a strong commitment to man the positions during the hours we need to man them. We typically get busy for cars from around 0500hrs. For coaches, it comes a bit later.”

Distraught

Looking at the coach operators’ perspective, Graham continued: “We’ve been through a number of phases over the last few months. CPT and our members were distraught the week before Easter having seen the situation our customers were left in. We were very clear that we wanted to see more capacity at Dover, and we’re very pleased that Doug and his team have achieved that, both in terms of the new coach processing facility and the extra resources from the French police to man the booths.

“What we saw in that Easter weekend was reassuring; the problems of the previous weekend had largely gone away. And in the time since then, I think engagement between my team at CPT and Doug’s team at the Port has been really good. We’ve been clear about the facilities Dover has put in place and about what is needed from our members. There have been specific briefings where CPT has been able to represent the needs of the coach industry.

“We all understand that there are a lot of people trying to squeeze through a small space, and there will inevitably be delays, but they’ve been handled much better than in the past and we’re really pleased about the growing relationship between the CPT, Port of Dover and all the other people that make up the ecosystem of the Dover crossing.”

How operators can help

What can operators do to help smooth the process? Not every eventuality can be planned out of the system, Doug cautioned, and advised that being prepared is still a sensible precaution. “The first thing is to make sure that there is food and water on board the coach,” he advised. “Whilst we’re doing very well just now, if there’s an accident somewhere along the route or if there’s a technical problem or industrial action, we could see delays that we’ll have to deal with.

“The second thing is to make certain that people are prepared for the passport checks. We’ve had instances in the past, pre-Brexit, where the party leader would collect the passports and present them to the Police aux Frontières. What we need now is for every individual to have their own passport in their hand as they are processed. We need to get people in the position where it’s like a pit-stop. The coach pulls in, we get them off the coach, through the process and back on as quickly as possible. Being prepared for that really helps us to achieve it. It’s hugely helpful when it happens.”

So is the Port ready to handle whatever the future might have in store? “Given how well it’s been going, I have high confidence that we can maintain that,” Doug said. “Going forwards, we need to be more alert to the big coach weekends than we have been in the past, especially the February half term and Easter. A busy day might be 800 coaches per day on those weekends, compared to a busy summer day when we might see 400, maybe 500.

“The next spike weekend that we’re looking at is September, for the Rugby World Cup. We’re expecting a lot of coaches wishing to travel across, so we’ll be looking closely at that. If the bookings suggest that we need to have a different plan in place, we’ll think about it and do another industry briefing with CPT and others.”

“We’ll be looking to work closely with the Port,” confirmed Graham, “to make sure that the capacity is there, the Port has the information it needs to plan effectively and that we’re channelling messages back to our members about what they need to do to make the whole system work.”

New entry & exit system

“Looking further ahead,” continued Graham, “I think we’re all worried about the implementation of the new entry and exit system around October or November which will pose additional challenges. We believe it will take just over a minute to process a typical passport, so with 50 people on a typical coach you can see how long it will take to do the processing.

“Getting ready for that and making sure there is sufficient processing capacity for that additional layer is the next major challenge ahead of us.”

The new entry-exit system introduces biometric checks which sit alongside the passport when a person passes through the border controls, and is being introduced across the European Union. There will be two steps to the news process; the initial adding of a person’s data to the system, and then the validation at the border. “We’re not anticipating the validation at the border to be very different to how it is today,” Doug explained. “It’s a digital process, so there should be an ambition to make it better and faster than manually checking and stamping a passport.

“The registration process is the more problematic component. Once you’re registered, you have a rolling three years; each time you cross the border, that resets for another three years. But the initial registration process is going to be clunky. The way the legislation is currently written, that needs to take place at the border in the presence of an immigration officer. So that means in the ferry terminal.

“Whilst the port geographically is not huge, the space we have for passport checking is tight, and there isn’t the capacity there to handle that volume. It could take two minutes to register someone, in addition to the processing time at the border. We’re lobbying the Government and the EU to enable that process to be done remotely, ideally through an app, or if not then for coaches we’d like it to be conducted in our facility in the western docks. That would require quite a bit more investment to make it work for that process.”

The port has a number of projects in place to help speed up the throughput of all vehicles over the next few years, and which represents a significant investment programme as well as a logistical challenge to complete the work whilst the port remains open. Assisted by £45m of funding from Kent County Council through the Levelling Up Fund, the plan will see controls moved deeper into the port, with the aim of reducing congestion on surrounding roads in Dover and Kent, and creating more holding capacity.

However, although the Port is doing its best to re-organise and make itself fit for the future, when it comes to the new entry-exit system, Doug explained that more clarification is needed. “We don’t yet know what the final process is going to be. Once we know if we can do it in the way we are proposing, the infrastructure investment will fall upon the Port,” he continued. “However, we anticipate that the resourcing of that border function would come from government authorities.”

Thriving together

“I think it’s important to express the Port’s deep thanks to the CPT and the wider coach industry for the growth in business but also for working so well with us,” concluded Doug. “We recognise how important coach travel is, and how important the Port of Dover is to coach travel. We want the sector to thrive. We’ve spent a lot of time doing what we can to provide the facilities for that to happen, and I’m really grateful for the support we’ve had from Graham and his team, as well as the wider industry.”

“And we shouldn’t forget,” added Graham, “that we’re telling this story because of the bounce-back of the coach sector. During the pandemic when Doug was seeing three coaches go through the port at Easter, who would have thought where we’d be in a situation hasn’t just bounced back but grown, fuelled by the demand for affordable leisure and the increasing recognition of coach as one of the most sustainable ways to travel. We look forward to working with the Port and other authorities to make sure it can be fully accommodated.”

So whilst it’s clear that there are still challenges to come across the industry when travelling abroad, the Port of Dover has looked long and hard at the problems encountered and how it can play its part, alongside other stakeholders, in helping to smooth the flow and keep coaches moving through one of Britain’s busiest borders.

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