The UK government has announced it is scrapping its "one in, one out" pilot agreement with France, under which some migrants who crossed the English Channel in small boats were returned to France in exchange for an equal number of people believed to have a legitimate claim to enter Britain.

The scheme, which had been running for just over a year, was designed to break the business model of people smugglers by exchanging undocumented migrants who made the crossing for those who had applied for asylum through legal channels.

Only around 1,500 people were removed to France during the lifetime of the pilot. The government is understood to have wanted the scheme to continue but concluded it had not reached the desired scale.

A Home Office spokesperson confirmed the programme had ended. "The government's pilot with France to remove asylum seekers in exchange for an equal number of legal migrants is no longer processing new cases," the spokesperson said.

"However, flights will continue over the coming weeks to swiftly remove small boat migrants from the UK, and we will use lessons learned from the pilot to accelerate efforts to return small boat migrants with no right to remain in the UK."

The spokesperson said the government would continue working with France to tackle small boat crossings, adding that "real progress" had been made, with crossing numbers "significantly down on last year".

The French Interior Ministry said: "We are discussing with the British the terms of exit from the agreement."