Herefordshire Council has plans for no-deal Brexit

Herefordshire Council leaders say they have emergency plans should the UK and European Union fail to reach a Brexit agreement in the next few days.

Talks are continuing about a deal on the future relationship with the EU.

But both sides say they have not reached the conditions for an agreement, so the discussions could potentially end with no deal.

The event of a no-deal situation could see food prices increase as tariffs would be imposed on imported goods from most of the continent.

It could also lead to lorry queues due to more border checks and the supply of medicines could be vulnerable to disruption at Channel ports, particularly those with a short shelf life.

Councillor Louis Stark asked council leader David Hitchiner if the council’s procedures were robust enough to deal with the challenges it faces.

“We have the little matter of a possibility of a no-deal Brexit facing us within the next few weeks,” he said.

“I would like to ask the leader. In that context, is he sufficiently happy that our risk procedures in the council are robust enough to deal with the challenges facing us?”

Council leader David Hitchiner said he had asked about Brexit.

“There are two aspects,” he said.

“One is about the council itself and how the council and its services might be affected but the broader issue is about the county and how well prepared it is.

“That’s a much more difficult task particularly, given the dependence we have on agriculture.”

Monitoring officer Claire Ward confirmed that there is a group of officers preparing for next year.

“We met yesterday to see where our plans are.

“We are currently being audited as well to ensure we are in a good position.

“The biggest risk we’ve got is that we don’t know what is going to happen over the next couple of days.

“I think we are in a good position as far as we know. The difficulty we have is we don’t know what we don’t know.

“We will continue to work as a group and we’ve also got information from the West Mercia area as well.

“Where we are dealing with it as an emergency plan. That will assist us in the next coming days, I’m sure.”