NEW: BBC has seen the official internal management data for…

That is reference to lorry flow rates - which is what Cabinet Office key committees most concerned about post Brexit in terms of knock on social impact for supplies of everything. Government now confident its “reasonable worst case scenario” of 7k lorries in kent won’t happen...

That is not same as saying trade has normalised - drawing on multiple sources - ferry manifests, Kent checks, french official data - the level of empty lorries on the short straits is around 50%, and was normally around 30%... ...

traffic here was 67% normal in Jan - 82% in feb

Combining those and you get to around 2000 fewer laden export trucks a day in January, still notable fall now. Officials say much was displaced into last year by stockpilers. On other hand French transport sources suggest the higher value Tunnel export empties more like 50-60%

Officials have been tracking the commodity codes on the ferry manifests and have distinguished between freight flows hit so far in 2021 by general COVID downturn - eg clothing and apparel, and post Brexit transition - agriculture, food and groupage

So the impact on trade seems material, esp in agrifood, when consider that average value of a laden lorry going GB-EU is higher than coming other way. We will get the official stats next month, these are not official stats. general picture was tho corroborated by French officials

Here are the inbound RoRo flows, by the way - now at 99% of last Feb. were at 77% jan - this is for example our supermarket shelves continuing to be full.

Other details - 80-90% lorries “border ready”. Turn backs now below 1 in 40. Big manufacturers using “authorised consignor”

Other details - some of the lower traffic on short straits in Jan has diverted to east coast ports eg immingham and harwich - but unclear if that is mainly the early avoidance of French COVID testing - but traffic holding up much better than expected

More details - GB & French officials privately both report very good cooperation - ironing out difficulties in the IT system for lorries changing point of entry etc...

Also officials defining last January’s figures as “normal” I’ve pointed out before that other data sources from BoE suggest they were then already notably down on previous years - BoE used 2018 and 2019 too... https://t.co/pFSNsBSOWL

interesting chart from the Bank of England last week on freight traffic data into and out of Dover, showing indeed it getting back near levels seen last January in final week, but still notably lower than normal for previous two years (18-19 and 17-18) pic.twitter.com/KRvKMkgwSF
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) February 9, 2021

Full story here - “back to normal” is a quote indicating government thinking. It refers to lorry flow and confidence that the 7k lorries queue worst case scenario that would have impacted eg supermarket supplies, has been avoided:

https://t.co/ABo4Xx0gko

NEW:
BBC has seen the official internal management data for the new post Brexit freight border - roll on roll off lorry outbound flows to EU now at 98% of last February - though was 73% in January... officials say “back to normal”...

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NEW:BBC has seen the official internal management data for the new post Brexit freight border - roll on roll off lorry outbound flows to EU now at 98% of last February - though was 73% in January... officials say “back to normal”...

More from World

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NEW:
BBC has seen the official internal management data for the new post Brexit freight border - roll on roll off lorry outbound flows to EU now at 98% of last February - though was 73% in January... officials say “back to normal”...