As passenger numbers continue to rise and staff cuts bite, Jenny Southan reports on the problem of immigration queues at UK airports.
Barely a day has gone by in the past few months without a news report on the problem of immigration at UK airports – from the three plane-loads of passengers passing through Manchester without having their passports checked in April, to the crashing of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) IT system in May, which resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of appointments for visa applications.
But most controversial has been the lengthy queues for immigration at Heathrow – something that has caused great concern ahead of this summer’s Olympics, which will see an additional 43,000 travellers passing through the airport on each of the busiest days (July 16 and 26, August 13, 22 and 28, and September 10 – see “Olympic record, businesstraveller.com/archive/2012/may-2012).
It’s a popular topic of debate on our forum, businesstraveller.com/discussion. One reader, Binman62, said on April 11: “I arrived into [Heathrow] T3 around 7am to be met with huge queues at immigration. The fast-track and non-UK lanes were full and I would estimate that those joining the queue then would be there for at least an hour. The e-passport readers were erratic and people were being sent out of the line to join the EU one. There were two members of staff behind desks doing very little at the e-passport readers. None of the IRIS machines were operational. It is a national embarrassment.”
The UK Border Force, which is responsible for front-line immigration staffing (the UKBA is responsible for visas, asylum, passport and customs controls), aims to fulfil its processing time targets – 25 minutes for EEA (European Economic Area) and Swiss nationals, and 45 minutes for non-EEA nationals – 95 per cent of the time.
But airport operator BAA says that during its busiest periods in April, many passengers in Heathrow T4 waited three hours. On April 17, those in T5 waited up to 155 minutes; on April 25 in Terminal 3, 140 minutes; and 75 minutes on April 12 at T1. Terminal 1 missed its 45-minute target 12 days out of 30 the same month, while T3 and T4 missed it 21 days and T5 23 days.
BAA denounced the delays as “unacceptable”, and Willie Walsh, chief executive of British Airways’ parent company, International Airlines Group (IAG), said the public had been misled over the reality of the queues.
This came after immigration minister Damian Green said that official Border Force figures showed non-EU nationals did not have to wait more than 90 minutes to get through immigration. Downing Street, meanwhile, blamed the weather, which was said to have caused flights to bunch and, consequently, flood the immigration halls with a sudden influx of passengers.
Between January and March, the average waiting time at all UK airports was six minutes for EEA travellers and 25 minutes for non-EEA citizens – figures well within the UKBA’s targets. But in a recent BBC Radio 4 interview, Walsh insisted that there was now a “crisis”, particularly at Heathrow airport.
In the same interview, Green responded: “We are establishing a new central control room at Heathrow so that we can know immediately when a queue is building up somewhere. We now have mobile teams, as well as the people attached to each terminal, so that [if we] see Terminal 4 suddenly has a rush of planes, we can move people there.
“What used to happen when there were stresses, when the queues were too long, [was that] the security was relaxed, [but] the John Vine report at the beginning of this year said rightly that that was wrong and we couldn’t carry on doing it. We are making the border stronger than ever.”
It’s a messy affair, wrapped up in politics as much as anything else. After denying accusations of relaxing passport checks without ministerial approval, Brodie Clark, then head of the UK Border Force, resigned last November, and the Vine report – published in February by the then external chief inspector of immigration (now independent chief inspector of borders and immigration) – was one of the factors that led to the UKBA being separated from Border Force in March.
To help recover from this embarrassment, home secretary Theresa May has since clamped down on the situation, enforcing tougher, more time-consuming checks – which has contributed to the problem of queues, on top of a shortage of staff. To make matters worse, there has been a series of Border Agency strikes over job cuts, with airports forced to make contingency plans to deal with a lack of staff.
Despite increasing passenger numbers – in 2011, 70 million people used Heathrow, compared with 60 million ten years before – significant numbers of immigration officers have been cut as a result of the government’s public-sector austerity measures. Over the past two years, 900 Border Force staff have lost their jobs – about 10 per cent of employees. As the immigration system becomes more automated, the government aims to lose 700 further officer posts by 2015.
These figures hit the headlines after announcements that Heathrow would be laying on an extra 585 staff for the Olympics at a cost of £2.5 million, as well as supplying £2.5 million-worth of new uniforms for staff by the end of the financial year. A further 70 staff, who were originally expected to start when T2 reopens in 2014, will be drafted in for the period directly after the Games, when an inrush of students is expected.
Will technological changes afoot be a help or hindrance? Frequent flyers embraced the IRIS recognition scheme when it was introduced in 2005, but enrolment has now come to an end and machines were withdrawn from Birmingham and Manchester airports in February. The system has been accused of being too expensive and unreliable, and after the Olympics it will be retired completely, with the last of the units removed from Gatwick and Heathrow in the autumn.
Although some have complained of technical malfunctions and sporadic availability, posters on our forum are, on the whole, unhappy to see it go. On April 18, one reader, Azidane, wrote: “I have passed through Heathrow T5 and T3 on about 20 occasions in the past year and not once have I had a problem with IRIS. I have never queued more than two minutes to enter the booth. Judging by the length of the queues for EU passport control (including fast-track) on each occasion, it would probably have taken me more than 20 minutes to reach the counter. I find IRIS a godsend.”
However, given there are 385,000 people on the IRIS database, versus 30 million biometric passport holders out of a potential 48.5 million in the EEA – with four million renewed every year – it is expected that everyone will have microchip documents by 2017, providing a strong case for more e-gates at immigration instead of retina scanning. A Border Force spokesperson says: “Personal information stored on IRIS enrollees – including their biometric data – will be securely destroyed six months after decommissioning.”
The UKBA says there are e-gates at 15 of the UK’s busiest airports, including Gatwick, Heathrow and Manchester. But they aren’t necessarily quicker than staffed desks, especially as holidaymakers are often unfamiliar with how they work. Border Force says: “Our responsibility is to secure the border at all times and we will ensure sufficient resources and technology are put in place to deal with peaks in demand. E-gates are used by more than 5.5 million passengers a year. We are looking to roll out more e-gates and extend their availability to non-EU passengers.”
Every year, more than 200 million people cross the UK border and, to help maintain security, the UKBA has an electronic e-Borders scheme that checks travellers before they depart to identify anyone who poses a risk. Since April, the system has been extended from 95 per cent to all non-EEA flights, and it is expected to apply to sea and rail travel by December 2014.
Mike Carrivick, chief executive of industry association BAR UK (Board of Airline Representatives), thinks more could be achieved on the back of this to reduce face-time at immigration. “With more e-gates and smart zones, a lot more can be done to smooth things,” he says. “Airports and airlines put technology to great use with online check-in and so on, and we are taking API [advance passenger information] at the point of booking and check-in, which is all checked for the outbound, so why can’t that sort of process be done on the inbound?”
Smart zones were trialled last year in Luton, Gatwick, Birmingham and Leeds Bradford airports, and allowed passengers on low-risk routes into the country to be screened before take-off and given a “light touch” inspection on arrival. Further tests were planned for Bristol, Manchester and Liverpool, but the scheme seems to have been neglected since Clark’s resignation. Border Force says: “A review of the trial has been undertaken and a commissioned scoping study will identify the next steps as part of the Border Automation Strategy work.”
In the meantime, anyone determined – and flush enough – to beat the queues can pay £1,800 (for a group of up to six) for the VIP Heathrow by Invitation service, which was recently extended from royalty and heads of state to members of the public. As well as availing of chauffeur transfers to and from the aircraft, they will get private customs and passport checks. Now that is stress-free travel.
Visit ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk, baa.com, bar-uk.org, heathrowbyinvitation.com
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