Kent County Council Secures £20 Million for Dover Border Access Upgrade

Kent County Council has secured £20 million in Department for Transport grant funding for the Dover Border Access Improvement Project, a scheme to increase capacity and improve the sequencing of outbound border controls at the Port of Dover. The money comes from Levelling Up Fund Round 2, following a successful KCC bid in August 2022. It’s intended to cut on-highway queuing and reduce the need for the kind of emergency traffic controls that have become a grimly familiar sight on Kent’s roads.

KCC will enter a formal funding agreement with the Department for Transport and Dover Harbour Board to manage and deploy the grant. Construction will be handled by the Port of Dover’s own contractors. Anything over the £20 million will be picked up by Dover Harbour Board from its own pocket.

The real ambition here is ditching Operation Brock. Rather than managing the knock-on chaos across the motorway network, the project attacks the problem at source — keeping the inevitable queuing within the port estate itself, where it belongs, instead of watching it snake back through half of east Kent.

One small administrative detail. The £20 million counts as a subsidy under the Subsidy Control Act 2022, which means a three-party agreement between KCC, the Department for Transport and Dover Harbour Board must be signed before a penny moves.