The environment secretary, Angela Eagle, has said the removal of border checks and paperwork on plant imports will “dissolve” £60m of annual costs for the horticulture industry when the UK and EU’s new post-Brexit deal comes into force. Speaking during a visit to Provender Nurseries in Swanley, Kent, Eagle said the signing of the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement at the UK-EU summit on 20 November would make trade “easier and more predictable”.
“If we get the ink dry on 20 November, which I very much hope we will … all of that uncertainty, the extra cost, the paperwork and the potential problems if things get stuck at borders would all disappear,” Eagle told the Guardian. “The cost, that £60m, can just dissolve and people’s potential to both export back into the EU and get their imports in … gets easier and more predictable.”
However, the move will not help businesses recoup the large sums they spent to cope with border controls introduced after the UK left the bloc.
Deal details and expected savings
The SPS deal, largely agreed between the two sides in May, is due to be signed at next week’s summit. It will allow the removal of the vast majority of physical checks on imports of plants, food and animal products, along with most accompanying certificates and paperwork. This will save horticulture businesses the current costs of trading with Europe, including plant health inspection fees, phytosanitary certificates, document and ID checks, port fees, agents’ fees, additional labour costs and extra haulage costs.
These costs total £60m a year, according to calculations by the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA), but do not include late delivery penalties or sales lost because of port delays or damage to goods. Eagle said the savings should put “downward pressure on food prices”, though she would not confirm the deal would lower the cost of food in the UK.
Industry response and remaining concerns
Provender Nurseries, one of the UK’s largest wholesale nurseries, welcomed the deal’s promise. The company has already spent at least £500,000 building a post-Brexit control post on its eight-hectare (20-acre) site, which will become obsolete once the deal is implemented. Richard McKenna, the managing director of Provender, said the business constructed the “sealed building and bought four electric forklifts to operate in it” to allow inspections of lorry loads of valuable trees and shrubs imported from the continent, reducing the “delays and damage” experienced at government-run border control posts such as Sevington.
“It cost a lot for a barn, but it gave us security as a business,” said McKenna. He hopes the SPS deal will convince some of Provender’s European suppliers, deterred by post-Brexit paperwork and pitfalls, to restart exports. “We need to see the small print on the agreement,” he said. “It could have been sooner, but we are pleased that it is happening.”
The deal is not expected to be implemented until the first quarter of 2028, meaning businesses will still face current border arrangements for more than a year. In the meantime, Fran Barnes, chief executive of the HTA, called for “some easements as a transition arrangement that are pragmatic”, such as fewer or no checks on lower-risk imports.
Timing and ongoing issues
Eagle conceded the implementation date was later than the mid-2027 target set when former prime minister Keir Starmer announced his EU “reset” deal in May 2025. She said Starmer’s replacement by Andy Burnham led to a “pause” in negotiations with Brussels, with the upcoming November summit pushed back from July. The original target was “always a very, very ambitious timescale”, she said, adding that “that extra time has meant we could deal in more coherent way with some of the knottier, thornier issues on things like pesticides”.
The UK has continued to use some pesticides and fungicides banned in the EU, prompting industry concerns that British potatoes grown in 2027 and treated with such pesticides could need to be thrown away if the resulting frozen chips went on sale after the deal’s implementation. Eagle said: “We are very well aware of these kinds of issues and the EU is also very aware it doesn’t want to be seen to be wasting food.”
British exporters of produce including seed potatoes and some mussels hope the SPS deal will allow trade halted by Brexit to restart. Adam Taylor, a director of Taylors Bulbs in Lincolnshire, which supplies tulip, daffodil and other bulbs across the UK and Ireland, said: “We have been waiting for this moment, but it all depends on the timing of the deal.” A Brexit certification disagreement halted exports of British seed potatoes, particularly from Scotland, to the EU, and Taylors set up an Irish business to keep supplying the Republic of Ireland. “When things go back closer to how they were before Brexit, I hope our Irish customer base will reflect on the loyalty given to them,” he said.
