UK Spent at Least £100M on Brexit Border Inspection Posts, Guardian Reports

The United Kingdom has spent at least £100 million on a series of “zombie” border inspection posts that were built but largely left to gather dust.

These facilities, designed to manage post-Brexit customs and biosecurity checks, were abandoned or scaled back as government strategy shifted, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for infrastructure that never served its intended purpose.

The scale of the expenditure, detailed in new information from HMRC, highlights the logistical turbulence that followed the UK’s withdrawal from the EU single market. While the National Audit Office previously estimated the broader costs of Brexit at £4.7 billion—a figure encompassing massive software transformations and customs system overhauls—the specific focus on these seven inland border facilities reveals a stark disconnect between planning and execution, The Guardian reported.

The Cost of Inaction

The decision-making process behind these sites was marked by rapid shifts in policy. Five of the seven inland border facilities in England and Wales never reached an operational stage because the government ultimately concluded that food imports from the EU would maintain existing high standards, negating the need for the full suite of checks originally envisioned.

Portsmouth's new Brexit border post could be demolished

The most prominent example of this disconnect is the site near the village of Guston, known locally as “Dover white cliffs.” Residents were informed of the plans on December 31, 2020, just hours before the transition period ended.

To date, the project has cost the taxpayer £28 million, yet the site remains nothing more than a field. The Department for Transport spent £21 million to acquire the land and an additional £7 million on ground works, including an archaeological survey to ensure no Roman remains were disturbed.

Other sites met similar fates, often incurring high closure costs after minimal utility:

Location	Total Expenditure	Outcome
Birmingham	£17 million	£11m build + £6m closure costs
Warrington	£17 million	£7m buy + £9m build + £1m decommission
Ebbsfleet	£10 million	£4m convert + £6m close
North Weald	£5 million	£3m build + £2m close

Portsmouth Council Covers Funding Shortfall for Border Facility

For some locations, the financial burden has been shared by local authorities. Portsmouth port, owned by the city council, spent £23 million on a border control facility, receiving £17.1 million in government funding. With the government scaling back checks, the council was forced to cover a £6 million shortfall—money that could have been directed toward essential public services.

The facility at Portsmouth now handles an average of only two trailer checks per day, far below the 80 checks originally anticipated. Mike Sellers, the port’s director, emphasized the difficulty of the situation, noting that the facility’s bespoke design makes it ill-suited for general warehousing.

Given the border post’s location within the operational port, ideally we would look to repurpose it rather than demolish it, but it will cost us almost as much to repurpose as to demolish. It was bespoke and built for food import checks and biosecurity, it is not suitable for general warehousing and will have to be changed.

The situation at Sevington in Kent stands as the most expensive component of this infrastructure program. According to a parliamentary question response, total capital costs for the site reached £154 million, with an additional £179 million spent on operational costs that would not have been incurred had the UK remained in the single market.

The Broader Economic Context

While the government vacillated, European ports in Calais, Dublin, and elsewhere implemented full checks on British goods from day one, treating the UK as a “third country” immediately upon its departure. This disparity in preparation showed how complex the transition's logistics were.

The figures released by HMRC do not even account for the independent investments made by major private operators. For instance, Eurotunnel spent approximately £41.7 million on infrastructure for truck checks and an additional €90 million on passenger systems, including an entry and exit mechanism that has yet to be activated by French authorities.

As the government moves toward a new deal with the EU, the future of these underutilized posts remains uncertain. Port authorities continue to lobby for compensation, arguing that the financial burden of these “zombie” facilities should not fall on local councils or private port operators who were directed to build to specific government requirements.

Whether these sites can be repurposed or will eventually face total demolition remains a question of both economic and civic management.