Extra border staff to be recruited to deal with Olympic rush

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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U.K. government is planning to hire 70 border staff for September to prevent long queues at Heathrow Airport after the Olympics.

The immigration minister has announced the recruitment of an additional border staff immediately from within Whitehall to avoid a renewed passport crisis at Britain’s airports in September following the Olympics. All summer leaves for U.K. Border Force officers have been cancelled and drafting in of 480 extra temporary staff from other parts of Whitehall have been done by the Home Office ministers to deal with the expected flow of 650,000 additional tourists this summer.

However the immigration minister, Damian Green, has said that the posts had been due to start when Terminal 2 reopens in 2014. But they will now be placed to cope up with the post-Games rush, expected when tens of thousands of students arrive in the U.K. ahead of the new academic year. Mr. Green has told the Commons Home Affairs Committee: “Terminal 2 is reopening in 2014. Seventy extra people will be working there. We are recruiting them to be working from the immediate post-Olympics.”

The hiring of the staff will be done from elsewhere in Whitehall and the new staff is expected to be in post between July and October after getting trained and receiving security clearance. The minister has told the Commons home affairs select committee that a return to a “risk-based” policy of passport checks at Heathrow would not necessarily prove to be a solution for long queues after a clampdown last autumn. He has said the lengthy queues at Heathrow and Stansted depend equally on the wind as well as on the nature of the security checks, especially for long-haul flights.

Recently, there have been complaints regarding non-EU passport holders having to constantly wait more than two hours to get through immigration checks at the airport.

Mr. Green has said: “We are conscious that the summer is a busy period for Eurostar and Eurotunnel. We are conscious that this isn’t just about Heathrow but other ports as well. The staffing levels are designed for all ports, not just Heathrow and Stansted.”

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