Speaking at the Police Federation conference in Bournemouth, Chief Constable Julie Spence said officers were already struggling to cope with the consequences of rapid migration.

With tougher economic conditions, she said police officers must be on their guard to prevent violence flaring up as jobs became increasingly scarce.


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Mrs Spence said: "We do wonder what is going to happen as the credit crunch starts to bite, and we have already seen (the claim) 'people are taking our jobs'.

"What does the future hold? We have to be very alive and alert to that as police officers, if we want to live in cohesive communities."

Using Peterborough as a case study, Mrs Spence said Russian nationals were using false documents to pose as Poles to make it easier to access benefits.

Meanwhile, some Vietnamese nationals who have been arrested for cultivating cannabis factories in Peterborough, have dual Bulgarian nationality.

Speaking to The Evening Telegraph after the conference, Mrs Spence said: "The challenges we are facing are different to what they were even eight months ago.

"We recruited Polish officers to deal with language issues, but now the majority of migrants coming to Peterborough are from the Czech Republic or Slovakia. There are also more Albanians than we had two to three years ago.

"We know the number of migrants is still high because of the amount of people registering at the city's New Link and the rising congregation of the Catholic church."


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Mrs Spence also used the Police Federation platform to dismiss reports that some migrants were returning home, revealing that there were 93 different cultures in Peterborough, speaking 100 languages.

She said: "I can absolutely categorically tell you it is the same. There are foreign nationals in our cells every day of the week."

Criticising the Government's response, she said: "It needs to get its act together because there has been a rapid change and no real response, apart from a pat on the head.

"The costs on policing are enormous, certainly both in terms of officers being made to deal with other things and being involved in the complications of language."

She said violence had broken out between people from Iraq and Pakistan in confrontations over young women, while young men from some nations often carried knives, contributing towards nine stabbings on one New Year's Eve alone.

In September 2007, Mrs Spence called for extra Government cash to cope with the rapid population growth caused by an influx of migrant workers.

With the county's population expected to swell by a further 90,000 by 2016, Mrs Spence said the force needed to recruit an additional 25 officers a year – a total of 200 – to be able to maintain the present level of policing.