Joint Initiative Announced to Reduce Waiting Times At Heathrow’s Border Controls

A joint initiative to reduce waiting times at Heathrow’s border controls to a maximum of fifteen minutes for UK passengers was announced today by the Home Secretary and BAA. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Mike Brown, Chief Operating Officer at Heathrow Airport, pledged to work together to reduce the maximum waiting times for UK and EU passengers entering the UK from 25 to 15 minutes and from 45 to 30 minutes for those from outside the EU.

The UK Border Agency (UKBA), since its formation in April, has been working with airport operators to improve the experience for passengers at UK border controls and speed-up their entry into the country. A similar agreement was signed with Manchester Airport in August.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said:

“A strong border is essential for the security of the UK. It is crucial that those with no right to be in this country are barred from entry.

“Today’s agreement will combine these tough checks with our vow to make the process as quick as possible for legitimate travelers.”

Mike Brown, Chief Operating Officer at Heathrow Airport said:

“We welcome any moves to drive down queues and improve the passenger experience at Heathrow, and I am very pleased that the Home Secretary and the UK Border Agency have signed up to this positive initiative.

“Our priority is to improve the quality of service we offer our passengers at every point of their journey and we will continue to work with all airport agencies and our airline customers, to achieve this goal and drive up service standards across Heathrow.”

The agreement also pledges that UKBA and BAA will seek to improve the passenger experience through initiatives such as:

* using displays in arrivals areas to give passengers helpful information;

* introducing countdown signs in queues with estimated waiting times, visible clocks or public address systems; and

* examining the use of ‘greeters’ to provide passenger information, show them where to go and speed up their journey through border control.

The UK is undergoing the biggest shake-up in its borders for nearly 45 years. The level of staff working at the Border is at an all time high. The UKBA has 25,000 staff, including more than 9,000 Customs and Immigration Officers.

By 2010 the new hi-tech electronic borders system - eBorders - will count 99 per cent of foreign nationals from outside the EEA in and out of the UK, while checking them against watch-lists.

So far the £1.2 billion eBorders system has screened 50 million passengers traveling to Britain, leading to more than 2,000 arrests, including murderers, drug dealers and sex offenders.

These checks make up just one part of Britain’s triple ring of security, alongside fingerprint visas for three-quarters of the world’s population, and the roll out of ID cards for foreign nationals locking people to one identity.

In August the UKBA began trialling new facial recognition technology at Manchester Airport, with a similar trial taking place at Stansted starting later this year. The facial recognition gates use scanning equipment to compare the faces of UK and EEA passengers to their biometric passports, providing high security with quicker times at immigration control. If successful these gates could be rolled out to ports across the country.

Source: Home Office

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