Census confirms Poles as UK's second biggest foreign community

Polish shop: photo - flickr -creative commons/kake

According to census results from 2011, some 521,000 Polish-born people were listed as being resident in the UK, making them second only to Indians in terms of numbers of foreign nationals.

Poles are already the largest foreign-born group in both Scotland (53,000) and Wales (14,000), and in Northern Ireland (15,000) they are second only to immigrants from the Republic of Ireland.

In England itself, Poles are second to Indians, while in London alone there are 123,000 Polish-born residents, 24 percent of the UK's entire Polish population.

The statistics underline the enormous shift since Poland joined the EU in 2004.

In 2003, just 75,000 Polish-born people were listed in the UK census. The majority of these were Poles who had remained in Britain following the Second World War, owing to the installation of a communist government in Poland.

Since 2003, this figure has grown by six-fold. (nh)