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French beach patrols cut during peak summer months as officers are redeployed to the south of the country to deal with tourist season
French beach patrols are left depleted during peak summer months as officers are redeployed to the south of the country to deal with tourist season, it has been claimed.
A former Home Office official told The Mail on Sunday it was believed that the French would retain a 'nominal number' on the north coast to stop channel crossings, but would divert resources elsewhere to cope with an influx of tourists flocking to enjoy the sunshine.
This would leave patrols in the north at their weakest just as smugglers were ramping up operations to take advantage of calmer seas. It comes as one gendarme told this newspaper there were already 'not enough' police to stop the crossings.
Such complaints are unlikely to go down well in Westminster, after the UK struck a deal with the French in 2023 to provide £480 million over three years to tackle the problem.
The money was supposed to double the number of personnel deployed on beach patrols, while providing for a new, highly trained, permanent French mobile policing unit, additional drones, aircraft and other surveillance technology.
But the Home Office source said it was thought some gendarmes 'get sent to tourist hotspots during the summer', in a move indicative of French priorities.
The source also said this was the case for 'big events in Paris' that required heavy policing.
The day with the most migrants crossing the Channel this year was May 31, when 1,194 made the trip. That coincided with the Champions League Final, an event that drew a large police operation in Paris due to Paris Saint-Germain's participation.
France's PAF frontier police have previously conceded that beach patrols are scaled back during the summer as gendarmes take advantage of generous holiday allowance. UK Border Force sources have warned that people traffickers are aware of these holiday patterns and plotted to 'take advantage'.
La Prefecture du Nord – the authority responsible for governing the region around Calais and Dunkirk – declined to comment on the claims.
It also rebuffed a request for data showing the monthly patrol numbers.
The 2023 deal was also supposed to help fund a new detention centre on the outskirts of Dunkirk. But construction has been delayed until November this year, due to problems with planning approval.
When the MoS visited the site on an industrial estate believed to have been chosen for the 140-capacity centre, it found an empty area of grassland that had been cordoned off with rocks.
