UK Border Controls a total Embarrassment

With suppliers pulling out of the UK, businesses haemorrhaging cash on fees and charges and UK florists facing regular interruption to supply, Nigel Jenney, CEO of the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC) has issued a blistering attack on the Government about the border control systems which have already seen several EU suppliers pulling out of UK trading and wholesalers at risk.

“This isn't effective balanced border policy - it’s intransigence not supported by their own data,” said. “They’re penalising an entire industry because of a misplaced fixation on process over practicality.”

Writing in an unflinching statement, Jenney has delivered a scathing indictment of the Government’s failure to act, accusing ministers of abandoning flower and plant growers, wholesalers, and importers to the chaos of a collapsing border system.  A failed system which has seen businesses haemorrhaging cash, confidence and customers.

With practical, proven solutions like the Authorised Operator Status (AOS) model scrapped last week without reason, the industry’s patience has run dry, and they say this is not a policy debate but a crisis in motion.

Because while fruit and vegetable traders have won a temporary lifeline through relentless industry pressure, the cut flower and plant sectors are being left to wither under a regime of spiralling costs, pointless delays, and bureaucratic inertia.

And why the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC) has issued such a scathing statement saying the industry can’t trade on promises and need real answers to real question that affect the very future of the UK’s horti and floricultural industries.

In their release FPC say the Cut Flower and Plant sector has been ‘ignored and undermined’ and remains locked in an unworkable border regime implemented by our own Government - whilst imposing excessive official fees, chronic delays and impossible logistics.

Several European suppliers have already walked away from UK trade, citing spiralling costs and opaque systems.  A move that sees a loss of jobs, supply, and confidence with businesses - already struggling under the weight of inspection fees, port delays and deteriorating EU trade relationships - left to rot, with no relief in sight.

Which is why FPC is urgently calling on the Government to take immediate, compensatory action including

• Deploying out-of-hours inspectors at key Control Points to enable 24/7 clearance for flowers and plants rather than ‘in office hours’
• Redeploying the hundreds of inspection staff employed for the now defunct fruit and vegetable scheme into the flower and plant sector.

Because as FPC say that ‘time is up … we need action now’. “The Government must stop talking about what might work in years to come and start fixing what’s broken today,” Jenney says.

“What was promised to be a world-leading border has become a world-class failure. It’s now one of the most expensive and inefficient systems anywhere—crippling trade, suffocating businesses, and inflating costs that hard-pressed consumers are left to absorb.”

“This is not an accident. It is a self-inflicted crisis, born of political choices and a refusal to listen.  “The consequences are real, immediate, and entirely avoidable.”