Police said disruption had been caused by the “vast volume of holiday traffic” coupled with delays caused by heightened security at the border – brought in following recent terrorist attacks in France.
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Some motorists complained of waiting up to 15 hours in line, spending the night in their cars without food or water.
Highways England said delays lasted an average of eight hours on the A20 and A2 eastbound, while parts of the northbound A20 were closed to allow Kent Police, the coastguard and volunteers to hand out more than 11,000 bottles of water.
Motorists have been subjected to delays of up to 8 hours as a lack of French border control officials at the port caused huge queues to develop.
Over the weekend, United Kingdom vacationers had to endure hours in traffic on roads leading to the United Kingdom port of Dover, from where they meant to cross the English Channel by ferry or train via the Eurotunnel, with some having to spend the night in their cars as delays surpassed 15 hours.
“At one stage, only one French officer was available to check passengers on hundreds of coaches, resulting in each coach taking 40 minutes to process”, said the statement.
Heightened security checks on vehicles traveling to France in the wake of last week’s Nice attacks were partly to blame for the significant delays, but it emerged that there were nearly no French border staff on duty to check vehicles.
By Sunday morning the British broadcaster BBC was reporting that United Kingdom officials were to assist with French border checks that are conducted on English soil before people travel to the continent.
The queues reportedly began to build up in Dover around 6am on Saturday and police are saying they could continue on into Monday. I am so sorry for the British passengers starting their holiday with so long a wait because of controls.
The Government said as well as increased help with border checks, Kent police will be “proactively managing” traffic to get drivers through more quickly. Puissesseau says that he understands that French police have imposed more controls because of terrorism fears, but he “cannot understand” why more security forces weren’t assigned to do the checks.
“I know there have been discussions between our government and the French government to make sure we can try and ease the situation as much as we possibly can but I do think we have to acknowledge the horrendous incident in Nice would have put the French authorities on higher alert”.
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Government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said after French leadership meeting Saturday that officials are focusing on “adapting itself in all domains” to the evolving threat.
