Last year local officials told the BBC there has been an increase in people trying to depart from Normandy.
A Home Office spokesperson said on Sunday: “This government is bearing down on dangerous small boat crossings and restoring control at our border.
“Joint efforts have seen over 48,000 crossing attempts prevented and 1,100 boats and engines seized since the election.”
They added: “But we must go further, which is why we have signed a payment-by-results deal with the French to put 40% more boots on the ground on French beaches.”
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.