The head of the Border Security Command will step down at the end of this month after just 18 months in his role, the Home Office has said.
Martin Hewitt, a former chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, was named as the Home Office’s first-ever border security commander in September 2024.
He was appointed three months after the launch of the Border Security Command, fulfilling a Labour Party manifesto commitment. A job advert posted soon after the party came to power said the role would “ensure the border security system has the right capabilities to address the threats facing it”.
Around 41,000 people arrived in the UK by small boat in 2025 – around 89% of all people detected arriving in the UK without authorisation – according to the latest statistics. The number of arrivals peaked at around 46,000 in 2022, falling in 2023 and then increasing over the next two years.
Hewitt has expressed frustration about a lack of support from French authorities in reducing the number of Channel crossings.
In October, Hewitt told the Home Affairs Select Committee that French authorities had not yet rolled out tactics to puncture and disable boats carrying asylum seekers – which the UK government believed could be a “gamechanger” in reducing journeys. "It is frustrating that it’s taken the time that it has," he said.
He said “political instability clearly… has been a backdrop” to the situation and that he had recently visited the French secretary-general to the sea “to really press the point about how significant delivering this maritime tactic is for us because of the taxi boat scenario”.
“This was referred to by President Macron at the summit in July when he spoke with the [British] prime minister. So it is frustrating that it’s taken the time that it has,” he told the MPs.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We would like to thank Martin Hewitt for his dedicated leadership since the creation of the Border Security Command.
“Over the past 18 months, the Border Security Command has brought government agencies, law enforcement and international partners together to tackle people-smuggling gangs, as well as seeing the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act into law."