AN old military airfield near Stranraer has been earmarked as an emergency lorry park, ready to cope with major delays at the Cairnryan Port after the UK leaves the EU.  

Transport Scotland has said it has an "agreement in principle" with the Stair Estate over the Castle Kennedy Airfield.

Even if Boris Johnson and Brussels manage to reach a deal, there could still be significant delays, with goods entering the EU from Great Britain facing large amounts of new paperwork and checks, including customs declarations, rules of origin checks and product safety certificates.

A spokesperson for Transport Scotland said: "While we still need clarity from the UK government on the terms of exit, including the requirements for checks on goods moving from GB to NI, at this stage we do not expect a significant increase in traffic or delays at Cairnryan.

"Nevertheless we have been engaging with ferry operators who have assured us that they have capacity to cover increased demand on the Cairnryan/Larne routes.

"We have also worked with local resilience partners to develop a contingency plan in case of traffic disruption at Cairnryan and are now moving to test that plan."

The Scottish Labour leader of Dumfries and Galloway Council, Elaine Murray, told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland there were concerns that lorries could end up blocking the A75 and A77 if the port could not cope with the traffic.

"We've also got issues around the export of animal products and the export of live animals, of which a number are exported from our region," she said.

"We've had several scenarios which the council has been planning around for the last couple of years or more, trying to put in mitigation for the impact of those.

"In our view it's very late in the day to be talking about the emergency lorry park. We would have like that to have been settled a lot earlier so local people knew what was happening.”

Over the weekend, Scottish Brexit Secretary Michael Russell told the BBC that the Scottish Government has not been able to undertake the proposed expansion of the port at Cairnryan in preparation for Brexit because Westminster would not agree to fund it.

He said: “All the arrangements we have made are to meet worst case scenario. The reality is we are doing everything we can to avoid disaster foisted upon us but we cannot do everything. There should be a pause on this.”