Now estate agents are signing in to Polish customers

Now estate agents are marketing their properties in Polish to take advantage of the influx of migrant workers into Britain.

GNL Property Management has started putting up 'To Let' signs outside houses in Lancashire to attract customers.

The boards read: "Mieszkania do wynajecia dla kazdego na kazda kieszen. Mowimy po polsku" - which roughly translates to "House to let for everybody. We speak Polish."

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Graham Lightbown, the firm's managing director, said he decided

to create the Polish-only signs to prevent unscrupulous landlords taking advantage of migrant workers by renting out substandard properties.

He discovered families being exploited and said the language barrier was a huge problem for those with little or no English.

He teamed up with Pole Daniel Zabiegalowski, 24, whom he had helped find a place to live in 2003 and who acted as a translator.

Mr Lightbown, who has 150 houses on his books, said: "Some Polish people are living in homes that are in a state of disrepair.

"I built up a relationship with this family and I have been helping other Polish people find homes, sort out National Insurance numbers and council tax when they come to the UK. People from Poland are respectful people. They look after the properties.

"I set up the business in 1999 and I would have produced signs that could be read by Asian people when Asian people first moved to the UK."

The move is the latest in a series of attempts to cash in on the 700,000 Polish workers who live in the UK.

In January, NatWest launched its first dedicated Polish bank account and there are numerous other services which are tailor-made for the Polish community.

Since Poland joined the European Union in 2004, an estimated 50,000 migrants have settled in Lancashire.

The UK already has around 600,000 people originally from Poland, many of whom settled here before and after the Second World War.

Janaid Qureshi, chief executive officer of the Ethnic Minorities Development Association, said the property signs are a positive development because they make people feel welcome.

Katrina Sudnik, 25, whose father Zdzislaw Sudnik, 56, is the chairman of the Polish Community Association, said: "It is a positive step. Some Polish people don't know what they are entering into when they are renting homes.

"They can pay high prices and can be taken advantage of.

"My dad has helped look after Poles over the last 15 years because they are taken advantage of. It is quite nice for the letting agency to write a sign in Polish."

Eastern Europe immigrants have been given pamphlets asking them not to drink-drive, poach fish from rivers or kill wild birds in parklands.

Government officials said the advice explains social norms such as tolerance of other faiths as well as other traditions and customs native to Britain.

The move follows claims that swans - which officially belong to the Queen - were being caught by migrants in Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire and butchered. The practice is now punishable by six months in jail and a £5,000 fine.