Traffic at the Port of Dover continues to buck the UK’s economic trend with the number of cars travelling through the port in January increasing by more than 20 per cent on the same month last year.

Passenger figures also show a 14 per cent increase and the number of coaches using Dover has increased by 20 per cent.

Nearly three-quarters of a million people used the port in January and the number of cars reached nearly 150,000.

The figures come as research into Dover’s traffic volumes over the past 12 years by Scott Wilson, the leading international design and engineering consultancy, shows the port of be a gauge of UK performance as a whole. The research highlights the correlation between activity at the port and UK manufacturing and employment since 1996.

Plotted together, the volume of inbound freight through the Port of Dover and the indexed growth of manufacturing output in the UK show an approximately parallel trendline, indicating that an increase in inbound freight corresponds to a proportional increase in manufacturing output.

Since 1996, inbound freight at Dover has grown by 115 percent and UK manufacturing output has increased by 7.6 per cent.

According to the same research by Scott Wilson, the volume of outbound freight through Dover shows an inverse relationship with unemployment, with the average annual 1.7 per cent growth of outbound freight traffic, which has increased by 126 per cent since 1996, over double the decline of unemployment in the UK in the same period.

“Research of the activity at the port over the past 12 years shows Dover to be a true barometer of the economic condition of the UK as a whole. We only hope that Dover’s continued growth will soon be reflected in the overall state of the UK economy,” said Bob Goldfield, chief executive of the Port of Dover.