“The A20 is closed eastbound between the M20 J13 and the junction with the A260 near Folkestone for the safety of traffic queuing to enter the Port of Dover so that it does not have to queue within the Roundhill Tunnel”.
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Some motorists were forced to sleep in their cars as they became stuck in the backlog, caused by a glut of vacation season traffic encountering heightened security checks by French border officials at the port.
The delays are slowing travel at the peak of the summer vacation season, when many British families travel to Europe by vehicle.
He said French border staff should have been better organised and prepared.
Port authorities said French border control booths at Dover had been “seriously understaffed overnight”, claiming coaches were at one point having to wait 40 minutes each for all passengers to be checked in.
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.
“We met a lot of young families with children, mostly people going on holidays”, said founder Ravi Singh, 46.
Delays for motorists travelling to Dover could “go on for weeks” after drivers faced 12-mile tailbacks over the weekend, police have warned.
After complaints that just one French officer was available to check in coaches on Friday night into Saturday, port authorities said six booths – four for cars, one for coaches and one for freight traffic – were manned overnight into Sunday.
The Port of Dover advised passengers to consider delaying their travel or make sure they had adequate food and water supplies if they chose to travel anyway.
“They could have planned for it, but Highways England and the Port of Dover have not planned for it adequately and what we see are the problems on our roads”.
“And if the French police is obliged now to control because of all the terrorism we are facing, I can understand it, but what I cannot understand is that they don’t put on enough policemen to control”, Puissesseau told BBC Radio 4’s Today program.
The queues reportedly began to build up in Dover around 6am on Saturday and police are saying they could continue on into Monday.
At the weekend drivers were waiting for up to 14 hours in Kent, as additional French security checks were made at the port.
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The new checks had been demanded by France in the wake of the massacres in Paris and Nice, and Friday’s shooting in Munich.
