A report reveals that customs checks are allegedly being abandoned at Heathrow airport during busy times to cut queues, despite arriving from “high-risk” countries.
It is claimed that the bosses at Heathrow Terminal 5 were more focussed on “managing queues”, which indicates that there was often no customs checks at all taking place.
Inspectors had spent up to 25 hours at Heathrow Terminal 5 to monitor the work of customs staff. The inspectors often found no one on duty checking people at the Primary Control Point (PCP) in the arrivals section.
The reports by the inspectors stated, “We spent 24.45 hours observing 78 officers working in the customs channels at Terminal 5. On eight occasions during this period there were no officers in the customs channels at one or both of the two exits, despite the fact a number of 'high-risk' flights were arriving at the time. During focus groups and interviews, some staff told us they felt the focus on managing queues at the PCP sometimes resulted in no customs activity even at times when high-risk flights had just landed.”
