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- There are fears that Kent, southeast England, will be littered with bags of excrement and urine-filled bottles left by the 7,000 truckers caught in a Brexit border gridlock unless toilets are installed in the next two months.
- The county of Kent has been called the “Garden of England” for hundreds of years. It was known for its fertile farmland and fruit-filled orchards.
- The government said it has plans for temporary roadside toilets for truck drivers whose journeys could be delayed for up to two days in a post-Brexit environment, The Guardian reported
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There are fears that Kent, England will be littered with bags of excrement left by the 7,000 truckers who could be caught in a Brexit border gridlock unless toilets are installed within two months.
From January 1, 2021, there will also be new customs and regulatory checks with 400 million deliveries a year of goods going to and from the EU, Business Insider previously reported.
Last month, the government said it would install roadside portable toilets (known as portaloos) in Kent for truck drivers whose journeys could be delayed for up to two days in a post-Brexit environment, according to The Guardian.
Mike Sole, a Liberal Democrat councilor in Kent told Insider: “We have been given no details of how where these new portaloos are going to be, how many there are going to be and how often they are going to be cleaned in the time of coronavirus.
“At the moment, there are bags of excrement, bottles of wee known ‘driver’s Lucozade,’ dirty wipes and toilet paper lying around on the A2 and beyond. We need a more permanent solution.”
He fears when the UK leaves the EU's single market and customs union on December 31 and that Kent, which is known as the "Garden of England" for its fertile farmland and fruit-filled orchards, might become the "toilet of England," as Cllr Sole told The Guardian.
Elizabeth de Jong, Policy Director at Road Haulage Association and Logistics UK, told the UK Parliament's Brexit Committee on Wednesday that there was a government "reticence" to erect the portaloos. There were concerns that drivers on the other side of the busy roads might risk dangerous crossings to use them.
Heidi Skinner, Policy Manager at Road Haulage Association and Logistics UK said: "Having access to toilet facilities in the working environment is a basic human right and HGV drivers forced to park up overnight without them deserve better support.
"The government needs to take urgent steps to provide toilets for those delayed in transiting the border from January 1, 2020, either portaloos in the short term or the construction of a more permanent solution."
A Highways England spokesperson told Insider: "The Kent Resilience Forum's Driver Welfare plan considers the reasonable and proportionate distribution of both passenger and freight traffic during significant congestion.
"It covers the deployment of food, water, medicine, warmth, and sanitation. We are working at pace with the Kent Resilience Forum to help develop these plans for the end of the transition period."