THE Anglia region has overtaken London for attracting eastern European workers.

About 14 per cent of people from the Accession Eight countries (A8) - the countries given open access to the UK to work on joining the European Union in May 2004 - who arrived in the UK between April and June this year registered for work in the Anglia region, compared to ten per cent in London.

About 71 per cent were from Poland, with most people working in administration and business management and hospitality and catering, according to the Department of Work and Pensions' (DWP) Accession Monitoring Report for that period.

Recruitment agency Baltic Recruitment Services in Hartlepool, which places eastern European workers in positions across the country, including Essex said employers turn to the agency as a last resort.

It recently placed two workers in Essex for agricultural work.

Business manager Lara Jackson said: "We place a lot of people in rural areas and it's because employers say they can't find UK workers to fill the gap. The people who register with us tend to be very highly skilled and employers tell us workers are reliable, happy to be there, are motivated and want to do a good job."

An audit commission report found that in Colchester, 910 people from the A8 countries registered to work between May 2004 and March 2007. This figure only means people registered to work, and they may have moved to other areas or left the country since registering.

The main countries of origin were Poland (575 people), Lithuania (105 people) and 75 from Slovakia. Most people (41 per cent of the 910) were placed in administration jobs, followed by health and medical services (150), manufacturing (110), hospitality (90), agriculture (60) and construction (30).

John Clayton, chief executive of the Essex Chambers of Commerce, said: "If we can attract these migrants to fill the skills gap it's good, because we need them. But in the longterm this highlights issues for our economy that we are not training people to take available jobs. We need to change our educational system - we need to provide different choices for our children. There's no point in having media and philosophy graduates if we need engineers."