“Some routes are different, like domestic routes like the Isle of Wight or maybe up in the Scottish islands. Despite this, Bannister appears reluctant to pass judgment on the firm – whose chief executive effectively admitted breaching employment law by dismissing his staff without notice – or on the wider issue of rates of pay for international seafarers.Īssessing wages for crew is not always straightforward as “frequently international seafarers don’t pay any income taxes, because they are not a part of any particular nation,” Bannister says. While P&O Ferries’ ships remain tied up, rival operators have scrambled to take extra passengers, with the port helping coordinate. We hope they get them back sailing again in time for Easter, if not in time for the summer,” Bannister says. “We were looking forward to increasing passenger trade as Covid travel restrictions eased off, and so it is going to be difficult to handle that having the P&O ferries off the route. The 213-metre-long ferry, one of the largest operating in Europe, would usually only dock briefly at Dover during its five daily round trips between Kent and northern France. P&O Ferries’ hulking Spirit of Britain hasn’t travelled anywhere since the company sacked 800 workers on 17 March. His latest challenge has arrived out of a clear blue sky: as we pulled up outside the passenger cruise terminal, an enormous symbol of it hove into view. The 57-year-old would go on to work at P&O’s container shipping division before it merged with Dutch line Royal Nedlloyd and was subsequently bought by the Danish giant Maersk. How he relaxes Spending time with his children and in the garden.ī annister says he “fell into” his long maritime career after taking a job with small shipping group Trans Freight Lines in the US, following a degree in economics. Word he overuses “I probably use the word ‘wicked’ a lot.” I have a very good relationship with her now.” I was spending so much time working and travelling around the world for work that I missed her childhood. Last holiday Devon, last summer: “It was glorious.”īest advice he’s been given “Go into any change positively.” He believes “an early positive attitude” about change, “combined with early engagement, generally leads to a better outcome”.īiggest career mistake “I think I was not a good father to my first daughter.
In 2020 he was paid an additional £122,000 in bonuses, pension contributions and benefits. About 10,000 lorries travel through it each day – 31% of all the HGVs that visit UK seaports.įamily Married with four children, three of whom live with him in Kent, while his eldest daughter lives in the US.Įducation BA in economics at St Lawrence University in New York state MBA at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. A third of all the UK’s trade in goods with the EU is handled by Dover, according to the latest figures from consultancy Oxera, which translates to a value of about £144bn. It does not have any external shareholders, and its “trust port” status prevented it from tapping investors or going to the capital markets to raise cash during the pandemic.įreight traffic has largely returned to pre-Brexit, pre-pandemic levels at the UK’s most important “ro-ro” port (so named because vehicles roll on and roll off the ships), Bannister says, although leisure travel has been recovering more slowly.
The drop-off in traffic put pressure on the finances of the port, run by the Dover Harbour Board, which was granted a royal charter in 1606.
Covid repeatedly disrupted traffic on Britain’s busiest trade route, halted most leisure travel for two years, and even saw France close its border in December 2020 to all travellers, including truck drivers, from England. And I did sign up for that,” Bannister says.Įven if, on arrival, he was pleasantly surprised at the port’s preparations for Brexit, he never could have forecast the other storm clouds gathering on the horizon. “It was such a significant transformation that the nation was going through, and Dover is the epicentre of that activity. As negotiations dragged on, Brexit was delayed for another year, but when it came, the change was seismic.
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