From this last 8th of April the Home Office has started new checks on travellers leaving Britain by rail and maritime services. This basically means: all ferries, the Eurostar and the Eurotunnel Le Shuttle.

From now on, when you are leaving the country by any of these means your passport will be verified electronically. These checks (which had stopped in 1998) have picked up again due to the impossibility of knowing if a foreign citizen had overstayed their visa and will now allow the Government to check in a more efficient way who is staying in the country illegally, as well as improving the detention of criminals who are trying to leave the UK. Thanks to the digital microchip that currently most passports have, it will improve the system from the one carried out in the 90s.