Around 140 migrants in a single dinghy have been rescued in the English Channel. The people on the inflatable vessel, which launched from the Normandy coast overnight, requested help in UK waters and were picked up by two RNLI boats, the French coastguard said. They will now be taken to shore in the UK.
It comes days after Prime Minister Andy Burnham and French President Emmanuel Macron met to discuss how to "scale up" efforts to reduce small boat crossings. In August a single small boat carrying a record 230 people successfully crossed the Channel. The dinghy launched in Bay of the Seine and was shadowed for around 10 hours by French rescue boats in case it got into difficulty.
The French coastguard said it was not safe to attempt to stop the dinghy on water. It reached UK waters at lunchtime and the people on board were met by lifeboats from Bembridge and Yarmouth. French authorities said it was unusual for the migrant boat to depart from the area - 170 miles away from the usual launches around Calais making the crossing to the UK significantly longer.
Last year local officials told the BBC there has been an increase in people trying to depart from Normandy. In bilateral talks on Thursday, Burnham and Macron agreed they were making headway in reducing small boat crossings in the English Channel but now needed to go further. While the number of boat crossings over summer months has dropped to its lowest since 2019, smugglers appear to have started loading more people onto fewer, larger vessels dubbed "mega dinghies".
It's thought the people smugglers organising the crossings have been forced to go to much greater lengths to avoid detection following more robust policing in the Calais area. Between 1 January and 1 September 2026, a total of 16, 513 people crossed the English Channel by small boat from France. Downing Street says 45 extra police officers are being deployed to French beaches in a "surge team" to tackle larger dinghies with more people packed onto them.
Between 1 January and 1 September 2026, a total of 16,513 people crossed the English Channel by small boat from France. This was down by 43% on the same period the previous year. These crossings have become the most common way for people to be detected entering the UK illegally since 2020.
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