Poles working in Britain send home record £1.8bn to their families

Money Downing Street hoped might be ploughed into the British economy is instead financing a property and consumer boom in Poland.

The Polish Central Bank said the two million Poles who left home to work elsewhere in Europe sent home at least £3billion in 2007 via money orders and electronic financial transactions.

It is estimated that around half of them are in the UK. One Warsaw newspaper estimated the amount sent from Britain to be a record £1.8billion, ten per cent up on 2006.

But the Central Bank said the actual figure could be considerably higher.

Its statistics do not take into account the thousands of Poles who preferred to travel home on coaches or planes with their earnings in cash.

This would include those working in the "black economy" and thus not paying tax.

Experts say the figure for 2008 is likely to be even higher as Poles continue to cash in on the good wages available in the UK.

Economists said the money was being used to buy property and to invest in businesses in Poland.

A female shop assistant in Bilgroraj in southern Poland, said her husband, who works as a decorator in London, had benefited from new bank offers which enable Poles to transfer money to Polish accounts without paying commission.

She said: "My husband earns more from a week's work in Britain than I do in several months here in Poland.

"We have four children and without that money we couldn't support the family at the kind of level we are now."

Professor Leszek Gilejko, director of the Social Economics Faculty at the Warsaw School of Economics, said: "This is a very positive phenomenon. Emigrants are supporting our country and economy.

"The influx of cash is changing the face of society in Poland."

Jan Tadueski, a sociologist, said: "While many Poles in the UK are not earning big bucks by local standards, what they send back to Poland each month is more than providing food. It is providing luxuries".

Orders for washing machines, cars and other consumer items are on the rise and the property market, particularly in Warsaw and Krakow, is flourishing.

A spokesman for the Polish hypermarket chain Real said: "Over the last year we've seen a significant increase in the sales of white and electronic goods.

"The quality of goods purchased is improving too. We have seen a general increase in the sales of premium brands."

The Polish economy is expected to grow by around 5.5 per cent this year and the national currency, the zloty, has become stronger. But the migration has led to labour shortages in some areas of the economy, pushing up wages.