Travellers heading for summer getaways face long queues at Port of Dover

Coach passengers had to wait for up to two hours earlier on Friday

Travellers arriving in Dover for cross-Channel ferries faced queues up to two hours long as Friday proved a popular day for tourist travel.

On Friday afternoon the Kent port said processing times for passing through checks by French border officials were 90 minutes for coaches and 45 minutes for cars.

That’s a big reduction from the two-hour wait that coach travellers faced on Friday morning and the 90-minute wait for car passengers.

In a message to tourists Port of Dover said: “Today has been a popular travel day at Dover, and the port has been busy processing strong volumes of tourist traffic.

“Teams from the port, Police aux Frontieres and our ferry operators are working to get you through as swiftly as possible.”

Summer getaway
Coaches queue for ferries at the Port of Dover
PA

Disgruntled travellers took to Twitter to suggest ways to speed-up the wait times.

One person wrote: “You should open more counters and more staff as well will help flow the traffic, and have automation systems in place...like e-gates like they have in airports.”

Others reported missing the ferry sailing they had initially booked after waiting for 90 minutes.

The delays come after passengers were stuck on coaches for more than 10 hours at the start of the Easter school holiday period.

Delays in processing passengers have been blamed on French border officials carrying out extra checks and stamping UK passports following Brexit.

Dover TAP, designed to stop the port town being clogged up with traffic, has been put in place for lorries on Friday.

This involves freight traffic queuing on the left hand land of the A20 until there is space for them at the port.

Ferry operator DFDS said customers who miss their booked departure will be put on the next available sailing.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in