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“Dzien dobry, good day”, Adam Skaza says and smiles from behind the counter. Around him, there are shelves stocked with vodka bottles and beer cans. His work place, ‘Fajny Sklep’, is one of the Polish shops that have sprung up in Boscombe, the most ethnically diverse part of Bournemouth. Here, cheap housing is abundant and the reputation could be better. For Adam, presumably it is a good day because business with Polish kiełbasa (sausage) and piwo (beer) is booming. No wonder - when it comes to its growing Polish population, Bournemouth is no exception. The situation here has changed drastically. From ranking 13th in 2004, Poles have now become the single largest group of foreigners in the UK. You are almost as likely to hear ‘dzien dobry’ as ‘hallo’ – and some say this is where the problem lies.

Walking along Boscombe’s high street you see notice boards, free newspapers, ad placards – all in Polish. The Sacred Heart Church in the town centre is jam-packed on Sundays because it offers a Polish language mass. A new shelf with Polish books has been put together in Boscombe's library and even official documents are provided in Polish. The approach is not undisputed. Councillor for Boscombe West Lisa Northover said: “There have been suggestions that that’s not the best thing, to translate, because it’s important for people to be able to learn English.”

The Poles have noticeably settled and stamped their mark on Bournemouth, yet no one will stake their reputation on the exact number of Poles living in the town. There are no reliable statistics and figures are mere guesses.

According to Bournemouth Borough Council, 2,590 Poles have officially registered in Bournemouth since 2004. In their latest community assessment, Dorset Police acknowledged however: “The Polish community is extremely transient and most don’t tend to stay in the UK for more than two years. This will make it extremely hard to monitor numbers present in Bournemouth at any one time.”

Polish community insiders deem numbers to be much higher. In the Polish shops they say Bournemouth could be home to up to 20,000 Poles. Polish priest Father Krzysztof Kościółek estimates their number at around 5,000.

The priest for the Bournemouth and Southampton congregation noticed that Bournemouth’s Polish community is exceptionally young.

While their presence is hard to miss, English residents in Boscombe don’t know much about their Eastern European neighbours and vice versa.

Cllr Northover, who runs a local shop, said it was difficult to reach out to the Poles: “I suppose they stay apart. We’ve tried a lot locally to include people. I wouldn’t have thought that the Polish feel they weren’t included, but I’d be interested to know really.”

Celina Groom came from Poland to Britain in the 1980s and now acts as a voluntary mediator for Polish mothers in the area. She knows their problems from her own experience and from talking to the new arrivals. Mrs Groom said just blaming the Polish for not integrating was too simple.

“They are thrown into the middle of nowhere and they have to try to make their way up”, she explained. “They cling to each other, they want to exchange experiences, give each other ideas. But I know that they all also want to integrate and see what the British do, how they do it.”