Food from outside EU enters Britain unchecked, customs agents warn

The UK’s main post-Brexit border control facility is allowing potentially risky animal and plant products to enter the UK without adequate checks, warn customs agents.

Sevington, the post set up by the government to check UK imports after Brexit, has been beset by communication issues and delays as it struggles to implement a controls regime which was delayed five times before finally taking effect in April, the people said.

Goods entering the UK from outside the EU, which previously underwent rigorous physical or documentary inspections, are now entering with weaker checks or none at all, three agents told the Financial Times.

One agent, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he heard that goods from Turkey were being cleared through Sevington. The agent said that when he asked for permission to bring a consignment of honey from Macedonia, the answer was: “Yes, no problem.”

Another official said that six consignments of frozen fish had been cleared through Sevington, a government-run facility, but that their Common Health Entry Documents (CHEDs) that confirm that checks have been carried out had still not been validated weeks later.

“I don’t think that [the inspection] system is turned on, otherwise the system would chuck it back,” he said, adding that he had cleared fish consignments transited through France from China, Korea and Japan through Sevington.

Earlier this year, the FT reported the government had quietly implemented a contingency clearance process designed to reduce lorry queues at British ports.

The measure, known as the timed-out decision contingency feature (Todcof), would allow goods to be automatically cleared after two hours, regardless of whether the checks had been carried out.

Documents showed that, before post-Brexit inspection rules coming into force in April, the rate of checks would be set to their lowest levels or turned off entirely to avoid delays.

In response to concerns that the border system was not fully ready, the government said it had always intended to “phase in” checks.

Before the UK left the EU in January 2020, the country relied on the bloc to carry out controls on goods coming into Europe. The UK carried out its own checks on those arriving from non-EU countries. 

Under the current system, goods entering the UK from both inside and outside Europe can be sent for checks at Sevington, which is 22 miles inland from the port of Dover.

The agent importing fish added that some clients, including hauliers, supermarkets and food producers, had requested their products be routed through a different border control post because they did not trust the capabilities at Sevington. 

Nigel Hughes, an agent at EuroLink customs clearance company said one client had been invoiced for checks at the facility without any proof that these had been carried out.

Another client, which imports plants and trees from the Netherlands, reported its lorry drivers had been forced to spend the night at Sevington because no one was available to carry out checks.

“The main problem that we have with Sevington is the lack of communication,” said Hughes. “We’ve got no-one to speak to. We have mobile phone numbers which don’t answer the phone. We have emails, which are answered very slowly.”

Customs and trade experts have called for a review of the border rules and associated charges, which they say are harming businesses in the UK and on the continent, and endangering biosecurity.

“We need the next UK government to fast-track a veterinary agreement with the EU to do away with unnecessary SPS [sanitary and phytosanitary controls] checks that cripple businesses, are difficult to enforce and apparently do very little to improve food, feed and plant safety and security,” said Arne Mielken, SPS controls expert and managing director of Customs Manager consultancy.

The government said that it could not comment on the matter because of the ongoing general election.