Those on board, believed to be migrants, were picked up on Saturday night and are being interviewed by immigration officials

Up to 20 people have been rescued from the Channel after the inflatable boat they were in started taking on water following what is believed to have been an attempt to cross from mainland Europe.

Those on board who included two children, were picked up late on Saturday night and taken to the port of Dover, where they were interviewed by immigration officials on Sunday.

The Home Office said 20 people were picked up in the search and rescue operation. Eighteen are Albanian, and two are British.



The UK Coastguard said it received a call at 11.40pm on Saturday to come to the assistance of a rigid-hulled inflatable boat which was taking on water off the coast of the village of Dymchurch in Kent.

A search and rescue helicopter was involved in the operation, as well as lifeboats from Dungeness and Littlestone, and coastguard rescue teams from Dungeness and Folkestone.



The matter was handed to the Border Force after the inflatable was found at 2am, according to the coastguard.

Those on board made a distress call to their families in Calais, according to a BBC reporter in Kent. The families then alerted the French authorities.

The president of the Calais coastguard organisation SNSM, Bernard Barron, reportedly said: ‘We were called for help … with a boat carrying about 20 people between Calais and Dover. The castaways, who were migrants, called their families, who then alerted the authorities and rescue missions were triggered on both sides of the Channel. This confirms our fears: the smugglers are willing to take extreme measures, but the Channel is a real highway, presenting a great danger for this type of crossing.”

Further details about the identities of those on board were not released. It follows another incident off the Kent coast in April when two men were rescued by lifeboat volunteers after they apparently rowed across the Channel from France in a 10ft rubber dinghy.



An incoming ferry spotted the men in the strait of Dover after the alarm was raised when one of them was able to use his mobile phone to ring 999 and tell police they were lost at sea.

A separate statement about Saturday night’s incident was released by Kent police, which said they had been called at midnight following concerns about two boats off the coast of Dymchurch.

David Monk, the Conservative leader of Shepway district council, said he believed high levels of surveillance in the Channel would mean most boats making the crossing would be identified.

He added: “I do not think it’s a major problem at this time, I would have thought this was one of the most surveyed stretches of coast in the world because it is one of the busiest stretches of water in the world.

The rescue came after a report in the Sunday Times that the Border Force was operating a reduced fleet of vessels due to cutbacks.

The Home Office declined to confirm the report but stated that four of the force’s fleet of five “cutters” were stationed in UK waters. Three are in operation at any one time, it added. The fifth is deployed in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey.