The Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) has written to government ministers with its learnings two weeks into the new border arrangements. The move came after reports suggested that importers had suffered losses of plants and fresh produce due to IT issues which delayed some lorries for more than 24 hours.
The system outage of the Automatic Licence Verification System (ALVS) was said to have affected loads on 11 and 12 May. Some sources suggest that since the introduction of increased checks at the end of April, problems with the government’s Automatic Licence Verification System (ALVS) have led to an increasing number of lorries being held at border posts for many hours while the checking of documents is carried out manually.
Nigel Jenney, chief executive of the Fresh Produce Consortium, said his members had encountered chaos at the border since the weekend, with ongoing issues that will hit traders hard. “The complexity and confusion at the borders has thrown the industry into total chaos,” he told Sky News.
“The last few days have pushed industry to the brink, yet Government continued the line ‘no delays at the border’…” he added. “The ongoing failures have imposed huge financial burden on industry.”
Meanwhile the HTA has warned that the government’s ‘pragmatic approach’ means a very low level of plant health inspections, risking biosecurity, hiked costs of importing, and ongoing systems issues causing concern and mounting resource burdens.
The HTA’s letter to Environment Minister, Lord Douglas Miller OBE, sets out clear asks on the here and now, including system fixes, engagement on costs, clarity on data and a plan for the pragmatic approach to give industry the reassurance in the border. The letter goes further and seeks to ensure that along with current challenges being addressed, the longer-term need to have a plan to address BCP capability and sector access to easements, such as AOS or a trusted trader scheme, are also delivered. The HTA calls on ministers to convene a meeting of those involved and impacted by the new border changes.
Fran Barnes, Chief Executive of the HTA, commented, “We know many in the sector shifted their imports to manage the risks of delays and disruption in the early days of the new changes. We are disappointed that we are still on day one check levels today and see system issues and challenges that are ongoing. Well-reported outages are having a knock-on effect on the plant trade and on the ramping up of checks, and they are causing confusion and a lack of confidence in the border, its operations, and biosecurity.
“Many across the sector still do not know, and will not know for some time, the full costs of imports and have any certainty to plan and manage cash flow, with a hotch-potch of pricing regimes, and no publicly available data on inspection levels and trade routes. We are in the dark and unable to access the data the BTOM relies on.”
