Migrants make room for '20 to a house'
By Tom Wall
Polish migrant Kamilla Kyc lives with her four children in a room measuring three metres by three metres. "This is no good," she explains in faltering English. "The problem is only one room for five people. The other people who live here drink, cigarettes, everything. It is a bad place to bring up children."
The two-storey house, on a housing estate near the central shopping precinct in Slough, Berkshire, is also home to 20 migrants who work in the building trade. Kyc's two sons spend their evenings in the smoke-filled lounge watching the other tenants drink themselves into oblivion. Recently, she was forced to call the police when one attacked her older son. She is desperate to move, but her part-time cleaning job at a local primary school does not pay enough.
This kind of overcrowding is not unusual in a town that has seen an influx of 10,000 eastern European migrants in the past 18 months. "It is not uncommon to find 12 to 20 people in three-bed houses, with wall-to-wall mattresses, three-storey bunk beds, shift-pattern sleeping, and sharing beds," says Neil Aves, assistant director of housing in Slough. "We have even had cases where loft spaces have been used with people climbing through the roof hatch with no chance of escaping a fire."
Research suggests that people living in houses in multiple occupation - typically, bedsit-style flats with shared facilities - are six times more likely to die in fires than residents in other types of housing.
Slough council is desperate to drive standards up, but says it needs more resources to help tenants such as Kyc. Its small private sector housing team - five officers and one administrator - is struggling to deal with more than 1,000 houses in multiple occupation.
Keith Best, chief executive of the Immigration Advisory Service, says there is a shortage of affordable accommodation, and that migrants live in overcrowded homes to save money and send more home to their families. "A lot of the eastern European migrants who come over here choose to live in what we would regard as overcrowded accommodation," he says.
Local fire crews say they are discovering migrants sleeping in corridors and in kitchens. Iain Cox, chief fire officer for Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service, says: "My fear is that we will see an increase in the number of fire injuries and deaths in premises with large numbers of people.
"A house fire can go up in minutes, and if they are overcrowded that increases the risk of many people dying."
Polish migrant Kamilla Kyc lives with her four children in a room measuring three metres by three metres. "This is no good," she explains in faltering English. "The problem is only one room for five people. The other people who live here drink, cigarettes, everything. It is a bad place to bring up children."
The two-storey house, on a housing estate near the central shopping precinct in Slough, Berkshire, is also home to 20 migrants who work in the building trade. Kyc's two sons spend their evenings in the smoke-filled lounge watching the other tenants drink themselves into oblivion. Recently, she was forced to call the police when one attacked her older son. She is desperate to move, but her part-time cleaning job at a local primary school does not pay enough.
This kind of overcrowding is not unusual in a town that has seen an influx of 10,000 eastern European migrants in the past 18 months. "It is not uncommon to find 12 to 20 people in three-bed houses, with wall-to-wall mattresses, three-storey bunk beds, shift-pattern sleeping, and sharing beds," says Neil Aves, assistant director of housing in Slough. "We have even had cases where loft spaces have been used with people climbing through the roof hatch with no chance of escaping a fire."
Research suggests that people living in houses in multiple occupation - typically, bedsit-style flats with shared facilities - are six times more likely to die in fires than residents in other types of housing.
Slough council is desperate to drive standards up, but says it needs more resources to help tenants such as Kyc. Its small private sector housing team - five officers and one administrator - is struggling to deal with more than 1,000 houses in multiple occupation.
Keith Best, chief executive of the Immigration Advisory Service, says there is a shortage of affordable accommodation, and that migrants live in overcrowded homes to save money and send more home to their families. "A lot of the eastern European migrants who come over here choose to live in what we would regard as overcrowded accommodation," he says.
Local fire crews say they are discovering migrants sleeping in corridors and in kitchens. Iain Cox, chief fire officer for Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service, says: "My fear is that we will see an increase in the number of fire injuries and deaths in premises with large numbers of people.
"A house fire can go up in minutes, and if they are overcrowded that increases the risk of many people dying."