London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Oct 13, 2025

Home Office pays firms £2.5m to pick up people trying to cross Channel

Home Office pays firms £2.5m to pick up people trying to cross Channel

Aeolian Offshore and CWind, both of which usually serve offshore wind industry, providing boats and crew. The under-the-table commission for this grandiose and unnecessary expenditure flows into the exact same pockets that receive the commission from the unnecessary money paid to the corrupt Rwandan government, as usual.
The Home Office has paid private companies more than £2.5m this year to charter boats and crew to pick up people trying to cross the Channel, amid tension with the Royal Navy over its role in the home secretary Priti Patel’s plans to deter asylum seekers.

Contract disclosures published on a government portal show that Aeolian Offshore, which is based on the Isle of Wight and usually serves the offshore wind industry, is the largest beneficiary.

It provided three boats for six months, earning just under £2m. The Home Office spent a further £564,000 for five months of vessel hire from another company, CWind, which also usually works for wind power firms.

Details of the outsourcing plans were published as the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats hit a new record, despite the government’s controversial plan to deter them by striking a deal with Rwanda to deport asylum seekers to the central African state.

According to the contract with Aeolian, its three vessels will work in 12-hour shifts, departing from Ramsgate, Kent, and sailing to “reported sightings of migrant vessels, to collect the migrants found”.

The boats, which usually have space for 12 passengers and three crew, must be able to accommodate a “minimum of 100 migrants” on deck, it states, as well as towing any craft that the people they pick up may have used to cross the Channel.

The contract stipulates: “Border Force staff will conduct all migrant movements and work the deck areas while at sea. The migrants will then be placed in Dover before the vessel returns to Ramsgate overnight.”

However, the contract also states that Aeolian will provide some crew, who “may be required to assist” with managing people who are picked up.

A spokesperson for Seacat Services, Aeolian’s parent company, said crew were provided with “specialist training in advance, and ongoing support throughout their time on the vessels to handle the unique challenges of the work”.

They added that there was ample room on the boats for 100 people, as well as the 12 Border Force staff and three crew.

Data from the boat-tracking website Marine Traffic shows the three vessels – 24-metre catamarans called Seacat Defender, Seacat Volunteer and Seacat Ranger – have made regular voyages into the Channel and between Ramsgate and Dover over the past few days.

Aeolian Offshore, which owns the boats, is an offshoot of Seacat Services, a company that typically supplies them to service offshore wind farms.

It won the £1.97m contract, which starts in June and ends in January next year, against the backdrop of growing disquiet about Operation Isotrope, the plan by the home secretary to enlist the Royal Navy to deter people seeking to cross the Channel.

Earlier this year, the Observer reported that the Patel plan was in disarray, with defence chiefs increasingly exasperated at the Home Office. One former defence minister said that involving the navy had turned it into a “taxi service”.

Details of the CWind contracts have not been published, but the outline disclosure states that its work involves “personnel transfer in support of migrant operations”. The company is to be paid £564,000 over five months. Like Aeolian, CWind – which Companies House filings show is owned by the US investment firm JF Lehman & Co, usually serves the offshore wind industry.

A spokesperson for the Home Office said it would not comment on operational matters.

“However, we will always ensure Border Force have the resource they need to protect our borders, including cracking down on the unacceptable small boat crossings and to save lives in the Channel,” they said.

Ian Baylis, the founder of Seacat Services and managing director of Aeolian Offshore, said the company was partly motivated by the “humanitarian” aspect of intercepting migrant boats.

“Seacat saw the tender come out a few months ago and, upon review, it was clear the requirement suited the class and design of the vessels we operate,” he said.

“We therefore decided to bid on the basis that it secures employment for our vessels and therefore crew, but also we felt this work was an important thing to be able to assist with, given the importance of the humanitarian element.

“Seacat also has an agenda to continue to expand the offshore wind fleet with more British designed, built, flagged and operated vessels. As such, being able to secure employment for a good percentage of our fleet enables us to make further investment decisions in support of the offshore wind sector and its supply chain.”

Accounts for Seacat Services, filed at Companies House, show it has an exemption from filing full accounts.

The exemption applies if companies have two of the following: an annual turnover of less than £6.5m, assets of no more than £3.26m or fewer than 50 staff.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
×