The UK has grappled with a surge in asylum seekers as the number of people risking their lives to cross the English Channel on small boats hits record highs.

Overcrowded reception centers and long delays in processing applications are a political headache for the government, which promised stricter post-Brexit immigration controls.

Several newspapers this week carried an image of a young girl running towards the fence of a facility to hand journalists a scribbled message criticizing conditions inside.

Her note shed an unflattering light on the Manston reception center in south-east England, where migrants are first taken to identity checks upon arrival, and on the system.

Almost 40,000 people – most of them Albanians, Iranians and Afghans – have been intercepted by patrols already this year, more than the total for the past 12 months.

Increased checks on ferries and trucks by French and British border police have forced desperate migrants to switch to unsuitable boats to cross one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

In total, more than 63,000 new asylum applications have been filed since June last year – the highest number since the record of more than 80,000 in 2002.

Both current UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman and her predecessor Priti Patel have described the system as “broken”.

According to official figures, an asylum seeker in the UK now waits an average of 449 days before receiving an answer to their application.

In the case of unaccompanied minors, the delay can even extend to 550 days.

As a result, 166,085 applications are pending — double the number in June 2020, four reps told Braverman in a letter on Wednesday.

Peter Walsh, a researcher at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, called the backlog of cases “the key problem”.

“The reason is largely that asylum applications are being processed more slowly than in the past,” he told AFP.

Walsh has calculated that the number of applications receiving an initial response within six months – the government’s official policy through 2019 – has fallen from 87 percent in 2014 to just 6 percent in 2021.

Braverman has called the rising number of asylum seekers an “invasion” that has paralyzed the system and said the state is facing staggering costs for housing while applications are processed.

Their language has been widely denounced as seditious and even drew a rebuke from the UN’s new Supreme Human Rights Council.

However, a report by Parliament’s committee published in June said the increasing pressure on the asylum system was “not a direct result of rising demand” and instead pointed to the way applications were processed in the UK.

MEPs blamed “inadequate” software for processing cases and “insufficient administrative and technical staff”.

Walsh also pointed to “undertrained” staff and high employee turnover.

In a sign of the workload, nearly 1,000 people were intercepted and brought ashore on small boats in the English Channel on September 4 this year.

The issue has come to the fore again this week after reports that around 4,000 people are being held at the Manston reception facility near Dover, despite its capacity of 1,600.

Last Sunday, firebombs were thrown at another reception facility in Dover by a man who was later found dead.

Local lawmakers, activists supporting asylum seekers and the political opposition are calling on the government to get the situation under control.

Hundreds of Manstons have been moved to hotels hastily reserved by the government in recent days.

But here, too, things did not go smoothly: In Northallerton, northern England, Ukrainian refugees had to give up their hotel rooms for asylum seekers from Manston, The Times reported.

Others were reportedly taken to central London and dropped off near Victoria train station, forcing them to spend the night on the streets, multiple media outlets reported.

The government has denied the allegation.