More than 1,100 small boat migrants have reached Britain in just four days, with more on the way, as people traffickers exploit the heatwave.

There were 392 arrivals on Thursday, official Home Office figures confirmed, in addition to 710 on Monday.

It brought the four-day tally to 1,102 and pushed this year’s total so far past the 10,000 mark.

Further dinghy departures carrying several hundred more migrants were seen from the beaches at Wissant, south-west of Calais, earlier on Friday.

The total is expected to soar even higher over the weekend and throughout most of next week, as calm winds persist.

It means the UK could be braced for one of the most sustained periods of small boat arrivals so far this year.

French police officers stood by and watched some of Friday’s departures from the beach at Wissant, with some filming migrants on their mobile phones.

There were distressing scenes as migrants risked their lives to clamber aboard dangerously-overloaded dinghies.

It came despite a recent shift in tactics by French police in the wake of a new, £660million three-year deal for beach patrols to be funded by the British taxpayer, which was agreed in April.

After years of lobbying by successive UK governments the French have begun intercepting some traffickers’ ‘taxi boats’ – but not all - while they are already in the water.

Last month French police were reported to their country’s human rights watchdog after using a knife to deflate a small boat packed with migrants bound for England.

Dramatic scenes filmed at Oye-Plage, a beach near Calais, on May 3 showed an officer slashing at an inflatable before it collapses.

About 25 young men were forced off the craft and retreated back onto the beach.

Officers who sprinted up to the dinghy were seen wading into shin-depth water but it was unclear from the video whether it was actually afloat.

A spokesman for the Pas-de-Calais gendarmerie said the vessel was actually grounded at the time.

But a spokesman for migrant charity Utopia 56 claimed it was illegal to deflate the dinghy while it was already in the water and put lives in danger.

It filed a report to France’s Defender of Rights – the country’s principal human rights watchdog – about the incident.

There have now been 10,244 small boat migrants reach British shores since the start of this year, not including Friday’s unconfirmed number.

At the same point last year the figure was 17,278.

But this year's current levels are not far behind the 11,690 seen at this point in 2022, which went on to record an annual high of nearly 46,000.

Earlier this year saw a period of sustained windy conditions in the Channel, which may have helped reduce numbers, along with several successes by law enforcement here and on the Continent in disrupting the activities of smuggling gangs. 

There have been more than 202,000 arrivals since the start of the crisis in 2018.