People smugglers are targeting the remote coves and small harbours of the far south-west of Britain to avoid clampdowns on their operations in the south-east, police have warned.
Police chiefs in Devon and Cornwall revealed they had intelligence that gangs were beginning to focus their efforts on the hundreds of miles of coastline in the region.
The warning came as a new police boat, funded by the UK government to help tackle the threat of the people smugglers was unveiled at a harbour in Plymouth, Devon.
Called Neptune, the 11.2-metre catamaran has a top speed of almost 50mph and will carry equipment including an underwater drone and a long-range infra-red camera.
As well as being used to try to halt people smugglers, the £300,000 boat will fight the growing threat from South American gangs who drop shipments of cocaine out at sea to be picked up by UK-based criminal groups.
It can also be employed to try to stop raids on the many wrecks, some of which are scheduled monuments or war graves, that lie off the south-west coast and sometimes attract rogue divers.
The Devon and Cornwall chief constable, James Vaughan, said Neptune was an important step forward in protecting the south-west coastline.
He said: “The boat will give us much greater visibility on the water, and help to deter all manner of criminality.
“That could be anything from the theft of lobster pots right up to counter-terrorism operations and the activities of organised criminal gangs smuggling drugs or people.
“The intelligence picture is quite clear. A lot of the international effort is being placed around the coast of France and the east coast of Great Britain and around, where the shortest crossing is available.
“As we’ve strengthened our resolve to prevent that, we’re seeing that some of the problem is spilling down the south coast. It’s further to come [for the smugglers], it’s more treacherous, but nonetheless it’s happening. The tactics of criminal gangs change and evolve and we have to be one step in front of them.”
One of the most notorious cases of people smuggling in the south-west happened when 29 Vietnamese nationals, including 17 children, were crammed into a dilapidated yacht and transported from France to Cornwall.
Astonished workers in the fishing harbour of Newlyn phoned police as the Vietnamese men, women and teenagers were loaded into a windowless van and driven away. Officers tracked the van and intercepted it on the M5 motorway in Devon more than 100 miles away.
A concern police have is the reduction in the number of people with eyes on the water. The decline of the fishing industry means there are fewer vessels out at sea and many coastal communities have been hollowed out by second-home ownership.
Det Supt Gary Bunn, who works within a national taskforce to tackle organised immigration crime, said: “Our coastal communities in Devon and Cornwall are fantastic at spotting things that stand out of the ordinary. They are close-knit communities, albeit the coastline is extensive, and so we continue to encourage them really to keep an eye on their local towns, their cities, their harbours.”
