The UK has announced plans to create an “inland port”, where imported goods can be checked without causing logjams at the coast, reported Reuters, citing two people with knowledge of the plan.
The plan aims to address one of the big challenges of Brexit. “Inland ports” were discussed at the recent IUMI conference in Cape Town, with several African countries seeing them as a potential solution to the bottlenecks created by ports surrounded by older cities with inadequate communication infrastructure.
It was reported that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) was in talks to rent a warehouse at Magna Park in Milton Keynes, some 50 miles northwest of London and about as far from a coastal port as it is possible to be in the UK.
Goods from the EU could pass through customs there post-Brexit, the sources said. HMRC is said to be talking to the owner of the property, Gazeley, about the lease, said Reuters, citing the unnamed sources.
An HMRC official said that inland customs checks were part of its “business-as-usual” activity