Staff at a major UK migrant centre have been asked to work overtime after more than 1,000 migrants crossed the Channel in a single day – the highest total so far this year. In a major change to operations, Management And Training Corporation (MTC), one of the Home Office’s contractors, issued the appeal to staff on Saturday evening at Manston migrant processing centre in Kent.
Employees were asked to work additional hours due to concerns about not having a sufficient number of workers on duty. The latest Home Office figures show that 1,194 people arrived in 18 boats, bringing the provisional annual total so far to 14,811. The sharp rise meant more than 14,600 people have made the crossing so far this year – a rise of more than 30% compared with the same point in 2024, and the highest figure for the first five months of any year since small boat crossings began in 2018.
The highest daily total on record is 1,305 people on September 3, 2022, in the last few days of Tory Boris Johnson’s tenure as Prime Minister.
The Guardian reports that a source said staff shortages are a long-running issue at Manston with the night shifts being a particular concern.
The taxpayer-funded facility in Manston is the UK’s biggest asylum seeker processing facility. It was designed to process up to 1,000 people a time for less than 24 hours but the former RAF base has housed over 4,000 people at a time for up to 33 days.
Speaking on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News, John Healey said: “Truth is, Britain’s lost control of its borders over the last five years, and the last government last year left an asylum system in chaos and record levels of immigration.”
Ministers have blamed the surge in crossings on the country’s recent good weather. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper pointed to the higher number of “red days” – periods of calm weather when the Channel is easier to cross by small boats—compared with last year.
In the BBC’s morning programme reporter Simon Jones said from Dover: “I think it was largely down to the weather, because we saw a week when it was really windy so no crossings at all and that’s when people are gathering over in Calais waiting for the weather to change. On Saturday it was really calm out there in the channel, that’s why we saw so many people make a crossing.”
