Heathrow Airport: Home Office must ‘get a grip’ on border delays

The boss of Heathrow Airport has told the Home Office to “get a grip” on bottlenecks still causing long delays getting people through border control.

John Holland-Kaye said he was not confident Border Force (BF) was ready to cope if travel restrictions are eased on 17 May.

Some passengers have faced six-hour delays, but it’s a “completely fixable problem”, he told the BBC.

The Home Office said paperwork and health checks would mean more delays.

But Mr Holland-Kaye said that despite Heathrow seeing only 10% of normal traffic passing through the airport, the BF still had the same staffing levels.

Last month, there were reports of passengers at the UK’s biggest airport having to wait seven hours to pass through immigration control, and three-hour waits were commonplace.

On Thursday, Mr Holland-Kaye told the BBC that six-hour queues were still “not uncommon”.

“We have less than 10% of our normal passengers, but they [BF] have no fewer staff than they have before the crisis. So, this is entirely manageable by BF if only they man their desks properly.”

International travel restrictions are not due to be eased until 17 May at the earliest, but there are fears that border control delays could worsen when measures are relaxed.

“We have not seen quite enough action to ensure we are confident that Border Force can cope on 17 May,” Mr Holland-Kaye said.

The Heathrow chief executive said the Home Office must “get a grip on this to make sure that the Border Force does not become the chock on the UK economic recovery”.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are in a global health pandemic, and people should not be travelling unless absolutely necessary.

“Queues and wait times will be longer if passengers have not completed the necessary requirements to enter the UK. Airlines are responsible for making sure that their passengers have completed all the necessary requirements, and airports have a crucial responsibility for ensuring travellers can social distance at passport control.

“Border Force is checking that every passenger has complied with current health measures when arriving at the border. Passengers should currently expect queues and wait times to be longer than normal.”

On Thursday, the airport revealed it had sunk a further £329m into the red in the first three months of the year, bringing total losses since the start of the pandemic to £2.4bn.

Just 1.7 million passengers travelled through the airport during the quarter, down 91% on the period in 2019.

Mr Holland-Kaye said the figures revealed the scale of the Covid hit.

Agencies