Officials have been on the PR offensive this morning, promising that entry into London Heathrow will be ready for the increase in demand in the run up and aftermath of the London 2012 Olympics.
Marc Owen, Heathrow director of the UK Border Force has stated that “Hundreds of extra fully trained border staff will be brought in”.
In regards to border security, he also stated that ” security measures would be proportionate”.
With an estimated 80% of people who are attending the Olympics from overseas entering via Heathrow, it represents a major challenge to the UK Border, which recently hasn’t had the best performance in the world with those coming in from outside the EU suffering major delays to get into the UK.
Meanwhile, an effort to step up use of the e-Passport gates will be stepped up to allow some passengers to speed through the immigration process (although they’re not exactly “quick” in any sense of the word from my experiences)
To address to post Olympic rush, there will be 70 extra staff coming on-stream during the summer rush points and new student intake into the United Kingdom.
BAA Heathrow has spent over £20 million to get Heathrow to some sort of readiness and the airport management aren’t going to let the UK Border Agency spoil the preparations, the scary numbers of 137,800 people leaving on the day of the after the closing ceremony and handling over 200,000 bags that day.
Meanwhile, the Head of the UK Border Force – Brian Moore – “does not anticipate long queues” to get into the United Kingdom during the games.
Mr Moore has indicated that extra staff have been deployed and “plans are in place” to prevent a repeat of the chaos that has been seen at various UK Border Points of Entry recently.
He has also stated that waiting 25 minutes or so to enter the United Kingdom
“is not unreasonable”
I’d love him to wait in a 25 minute queue with nothing to do other than shuffle along – and be forced to wait for an hour and then declare that reasonable to a camera.
Mr Moore also stated:
“Any delay of three hours would be unacceptable. There is no question about that. That is not right unless there is some extraordinary reason for that to be routine – which it isn’t.
Well when he waits 3 hours on his own coin in a queue, I’m sure he’ll learn how to get a grip on things.
480 extra Border Force members of staff will be on duty during the Olympic period. However, those thinking those 480 pairs of feet on the ground will have a serious impact, there also comes a stark warning:
“Staffing arrangements are improving all the time”
“I do not anticipate seeing large queues of two or three hours. However, there will always be circumstances beyond our control.”
“There might always be conditions that may arise which simply defeat us. Our job will be to make sure that at time of peak demand we have as much resources there as necessary to manage what is there before us.”
If you’re coming to the United Kingdom for the Olympics, make sure you have a good book to read whilst in the queue to get into the country.
And welcome to the United Kingdom. We’re not all ineffective process driven people. It’s the people in charge that pay us mere workers to be that way.
