Lincolnshire is facing major problems with – or without – its immigrants

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Lincolnshire County Council is in a quandary about immigrants in the region, Rory Baxter reports

While they are putting a massive strain on public services, creating resentment among local residents, struggling to ‘adapt’ to British culture and plagued by Eastern European gangsters, they are essential to the county’s main industry – agriculture.

Delegates at the Local Government Association’s rural conference in September heard council leader Martin Hill [right] admit that if all the county’s immigrants "disappeared overnight" there would be "big problems". And it wouldn’t just be in agriculture, he said, with social health and care services employing "a lot of migrant workers". He added: "I think a lot of employers are worried that they could all go home."

This was backed up by Alison Fairman, manager of Boston’s Citizen Advice Bureau, who said the young local population won’t work in fields or on packing lines, while others are on disability or incapacity benefits or are too old.

To shouts of "take their benefits away", she said: "The local farmers, pickers and packers need a flexible workforce, so young, vibrant Lithuanians and Poles are in demand. Our businesses have expanded, but there’s always that spectre of everyone going home and leaving companies with no-one to do the work."

The problem is made worse by nobody knowing exactly how many immigrants are in the region. While official 2001 population figures for Lincolnshire said there were around 55,000, over 74,000 people were registered with the health service and since most migrant workers never register with a GP, the numbers were undoubtedly much higher. "The speed of the change is the problem," Fairman said. "If it had been over 100 years it would be more acceptable. But over five years it’s very, very difficult."

Assistant chief executive Marcus Coleman claimed the figures only told half the story because while 194,000 people moved into the county between 2001 and 2005, 156,000 moved out.

With people coming into the region from 32 different countries, language is a huge problem and the council simply cannot afford or attract enough translators. People have been heard to say: "We never hear English spoken in our marketplace anymore." In an attempt to solve the problem, English lessons are delivered through ‘virtual ESOL’, where one teacher gives a lesson to a web cam and immigrant students around the county log in to the ‘lesson’.

However, Coleman said he didn't believe all "new arrivals" had to learn English (at this point one delegate shouted out "why not?") and revealed that the council had set up a website that sits on its server but is entirely in Polish and is run and managed by Poles in the community.

Local resentment is caused in many ways – not only do immigrants fish in waters without permits, but they have different social mores and "can’t manage bins", Fairman said, adding that it causes real problems with community cohesion.

Also, immigrants add to waiting lists for dentists and doctors, they use hospital accident and emergency departments like a GP surgery and they appear at school gates with their children without registering them first. In September 2006, 96 children turned up unannounced at Boston’s primary schools and 81 at its secondary schools. "That is a huge challenge when you haven’t got the services in place for these children’s needs," Fairman said, "and it can mean that local children no longer get the sort of help they were having before."

Often workers are going into rural areas that are already experiencing significant social deprivation and there aren’t enough houses for them to live in. This can mean up to 100 people living in one house, with ‘hot bedding’ common, that is several shift workers taking turns to use one bed.

"Housing has been a great problem and the locals don’t like it," Fairman said, admitting that the homes of multiple occupancy (HMOs) are often bungalows, barns or even caravans.

Hill said: "There are some severe issues for people living this way, there is exploitation of the people, issues of people in the neighbourhood, they feel there’s too many people in a particular property and that is quite a serious issue. Someone can buy a house and rent it out, with each person paying a certain amount to the gangmasters’ agents. Once they’ve been here for a while and learn to speak English they can get themselves out of that hole but many of them can’t."

However, speakers were keen not to paint too negative a picture about the effect immigrants have had on Lincolnshire. On the ‘plus’ side, Fairman pointed out, the immigrants are producing many babies, which has reversed the downward trend in the county and saved several local maternity services from closing down.

And Hill said: "It’s been a tremendous challenge but we do have a vibrant and diverse community."