MoD land ‘may be used’ to ease Operation Stack congestion

Haulage contractor Dave Dobson lives five miles (eight kilometres) from the Folkestone docks but said he faced a 36-hour journey home after returning from France. I’ll be out of work.

“Kent is no longer the Garden of England; it is the truck stop of England”.

“We’re looking at about 5,500 freight movements a day to mainland Europe. When it’s stationary, the costs are not being covered”, he said.

Scott-Smith noted this week’s positive economic growth figures, but warned: “Our GDP is now stationary on the M20”.

British and French governments have pledged to increase security at the Eurotunnel after one migrant died during an attempt by hundreds to storm the Channel Tunnel.

This is the moment a man decides to hold a disco in the middle of Operation Stack as truckers queue to cross the channel.

Typical disruptions resulting in Operation Stack being implemented include poor weather making shipping risky, tunnel derailments, tunnel fires and industrial action by port staff. The most recent use of the traffic control procedure saw the M20 closed for 24 out of the 40 days from June 20th 2015, first due to striking workers and then as a result of immigrants causing chaos in Calais.

“Nothing will change until a Frenchman gets killed”. Critically this relaxation means that drivers who have spent many hours queuing on one side of the Channel are not forced to immediately find somewhere safe and secure to park as soon as they have crossed.

Earlier this week, Highways England rejected the idea of introducing a contraflow system on the M20 to get traffic moving while Operation Stack was in place, claiming the safety risks for road users and transport officials were too great to justify it.

Opposition Labour lawmaker Keith Vaz, chairman of parliament’s home affairs committee, said the problems in Kent were down to the European Union’s “failure” to deal with a wave of migrants arriving across the Mediterranean.