A Dorchester resident instrumental in Brexit rules for imports and exports has been recognised on the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

John Bourne, who worked for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has been honoured with a CBE for services to the EU exit.

Mr Bourne said: "I was rather surprised, you don't automatically get one when you retire, so I wasn't expecting it.

"It's been quite a challenging year, what with Covid and Brexit and everything else and there's a huge number of people who got involved - so I was surprised and very flattered."

For the last two to three years, Mr Bourne has been working on the sanitary and phytosanitary issues around Brexit. These are the basic rules for plant and animal health and food standards - the requirement for products to come from disease free areas, inspection of products and maximum residue limits.

He added: "It wasn't everything to do with import and exports of food, but it was a very difficult part and it was quite a chunk. If you look at where the real challenges were with Brexit, they were one of the significant chunks."

However, Mr Bourne originally qualified as a vet but spent around 10 years in the Foreign Office before joining DEFRA.

He said: "I led the team that delivered the deal on the Thames Tideway Tunnel - a very large, multi-million-pound sewage pipe going under the Thames - and I worked on HS2 for a year, so my expertise in recent years has been delivering projects."

Despite working through a pandemic, Mr Bourne said it went "remarkably smooth in some ways".

"We were lucky in that the pandemic hit at the point when we knew when the next deadline was - we weren't in the midst of it," he said. "If Brexit had happened as the pandemic hit, I think it would have been particularly difficult. It did mean we probably got fewer resources to do what we needed because clearly there were other priorities.

"Everyone did amazingly well. It was a huge team that did all of this and the whole team should get credit for it."

Mr Bourne retired in February and is enjoying a slower pace of life.

He added: "I am doing a little bit of work but I don't want to lead any big projects - I've got a finger in the odd pie.

"I have a boat, which I enjoy sailing, and my wife hasn't seen much of me in the last two years and we've had the odd week away, which is nice.

"I'm just catching up and leading life at a slower pace really - it's very nice and I quite recommend it."

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