When Beatrice Bartlay moved to England she planned to stay for just a few months to improve her English.
You're hired: Beatrice Bartlay runs a10-strong recruitment firm up for a coveted awardFive years later she employs ten people in her recruitment company, is firmly established in London and has recently been nominated for a business award.
Beatrice is typical of the enterprising Poles who began their invasion of the UK when Poland joined the European Union in 2004. Since then more than 600,000 have officially come to Britain, with some estimates suggesting the figure is nearer am.
And these new arrivals are not just working behind bars and mending broken boilers — they are running their own companies. About 40,000 Polish-owned businesses were set up in Britain in 2007 alone. And despite worsening economic conditions, many Poles are still keen to become their own bosses in Britain.
Beatrice, 41, moved from Wroclaw in south-west Poland in 2003, but soon recognised a business opportunity in addressing the labour shortage in Britain, pairing qualified Polish tradesmen and professionals with British companies.
She sold her public relations business in Poland and set up 2Binterface, based in Greenwich, south-east London, in 2005. The company turns over £1.6m and is in the running to win the 'fastest-growing business' prize in the forthcoming British Polish Chamber of Commerce awards.
'Originally I thought I would only be in Britain for a short time while I improved my language skills,' Beatrice says. 'But now I have no intention of leaving, have a ten-year plan for the business and see a lot more potential to grow my company here.'
There is clear evidence that many Polish businesses are here to stay. Last summer saw the launch of Metropolia, a business magazine aimed at Polish entrepreneurs running companies in the UK. And Coleg Llandrillo Cymru, a college based in Rhos-on-Sea, Clwyd, recently became the first educational establishment in the UK to offer business start-up courses in Polish.
Magda Wrobel is a business manager in the Lloyds TSB branch in Ealing, west London, an area that is at the heart of the capital's Polish community. She has seen the number of Polish business start-ups steadily increasing over recent years.
'There are people who came here and always planned to set up a business,' Magda says. 'But some others came over a few years ago, have worked and improved their English and are now confident enough to set up in business for themselves. However, having Polish speaking advisers in the bank is important. When you are setting up a business you want to be assured that you understand everything invovled.'
But Poles are not just making their presence felt in the capital. Large communities have grown up in Yorkshire, Edinburgh, Leeds and Northampton. Slough now has so many Polish residents, some have taken to calling it Sloughski.
The High Street banks have long realised the opportunities this burgeoning Polish population offers. NatWest currently has a series of posters displayed in its branches written in Polish. Lloyds TSB signs up new bank customers in Poland before they arrive in the UK. Barclays has sent Polish speaking advisers into British factories that employ Poles to help them open accounts. And HSBC recently opened its first specialist Polish business unit in Ealing.
Monika Merritt works in the unit in west London and sees the challenges that Polish business owners face every day.
She says: 'The business community is quite diverse with wholesalers, people in financial services, hairdressers and beauty salons, IT consultants, medical firms and construction. But the slowdown in the UK housing market is affecting the large number of Polish businesses that are linked to the property sector. And with the Polish economy getting stronger, some business owners are asking themselves whether they might be better off going back to Poland.'
Some Poles do appear to have decided that the UK no longer holds the economic allure it once did. Where there were seven zlotys to the pound a few years ago, the rate is now just over four to one. And the Polish government has been doing its best to tempt its people back to work and run businesses in Poland. Prime minister Donald Tusk recently launched a series of adverts distributed through Polish newspapers and cultural centres in the UK encouraging expatriate Poles to return home.
Simon Brown is running an event called Positively Poland next weekend at Earls Court in central London, celebrating the people, culture and commercial potential of Poland. He believes that the Poles who have settled in the UK have changed the make-up of British society for the better.