Dover health authority says inland border facility will be ‘open door for disease’

The Dover Port Health Authority (DPHA) said the Sevington facility in Ashford, which is 22 miles inland, had not been designed to handle the scale of imports expected, and claimed its geographical position would “create an open door for disease and food fraud”.

In an excoriating letter, Lucy Manzano, the head of the DPHA, which is run by Dover district council, questioned the decision, pointing to “significant capacity and design limitations” at Sevington.

Manzano wrote that, in addition to the “infrastructure flaws”, the facility was unable to handle everything that had been asked of it by government, including hanging meat carcasses which come via northern France into Kent.

The decision to pick Sevington came despite the government initially indicating that the DPHA would carry out some checks within the Port of Dover itself, at its Bastion Point facility, which cost £23m and was only opened in spring 2022.

Manzano wrote: “Moving the checks inland will undermine our entire British border and biosecurity system, creating an open door for disease and food fraud.”

Manzano’s comments came in response to a letter written by the biosecurity minister, Robbie Douglas-Miller, in February, outlining the government’s border plan and explaining why it had chosen Sevington.