Asian store owner bemoans migrants looking for work outside his shop

They keep close to ward off the chill, waiting patiently in the drizzly north west London suburb of Stanmore to find work.

The group is small, maybe a dozen or so, but most mornings around 60 migrants scour the area around Honeypot Lane looking for work.

Some approach cars and builders in white vans in the car parks of the nearby Selco Builders Warehouse and B&Q to ask people directly, while others wait for white vans to pick them and ferry them off to nearby sites, where they are employed as builders, labourers, roofers - whatever is needed.

But this work is "off the books" - the men say they pay no tax or National Insurance, and instead get cash in hand at the end of the day or week.

Residents and business owners in the area are frustrated that their suburb has become a virtual job centre, saying the men can be intimidating and aggressive and are having a negative impact on the area.

Suresh Varsani, who runs Dillons estate agents in Honeypot Lane, says Eastern European workers have been touting for work outside his shop six days a week for the last year. Around 50 or 60 people gather at Selco and B&Q every morning from 6am, sometimes staying until noon.

He said: "It even happens when I am driving. They just come up and say, 'job, job'. It has become a central place for everybody to come for work, and builders are taking them on. I think most of them are cash in hand and it is not right.

"It is an issue and needs to be dealt with. It is not the proper manner for looking for work. I get them hanging around my shop, which I don't really like. It stops other people coming in and it is not a good impression for people outside my shop."

He said blames the issue on the influx of workers from Europe in recent years.

"I think in January we opened the doors for Romania and Bulgaria, and that is when everyone started coming in. There has to be some sort of control.

"I think there should be a figure where only a certain amount of people should be allowed to come in the country, because we are getting overcrowded," he said.

"There should be a limit. It is costing the taxpayer and putting pressure on doctors and the NHS and is not helping the country."

The men appear to have a simple system to help them find work.

Small groups stand on the roadside, near the entrance to Selco, or at a bus stop or next to the exit from the B&Q car park.

A man on the other side of the road signals to passing van drivers that the men want work and if they stop some men jump in, their places soon filled by others waiting to be picked up.

Some simply approach van drivers in the car parks and ask them for work, while others wander around to try their luck.

Outside Hunny Pot, a small grocery shop next to Dillons that also sells halal meat, a young Romanian man dressed in a blue hoodie and fluorescent T-shirt shivers against the cold.

Other workers scatter, but Iusti stays put - he has been waiting since 7am for his boss to pick him up.

Just 19, Iusti came to the UK four months ago from Botosani in northern Romania. His father died in August, his mother lives in Italy, his sister in Spain and he has a 16-year-old girlfriend, Valentina, back home. Her father works, earning about £160 a month.

The shy young man says he came here on his own to earn money. Soon after driving to London in a van with seven other people he found work near Victoria and Pimlico, labouring for three weeks.

Work has been sporadic and he now lives with 13 other people in a house on an estate in Queensbury, Harrow, doing occasional jobs in the area as a roofer.

Iusti says around 30 or 40 men, Romanians and Romanian gypsies, turn out at around 6am every morning looking for work. Some have been in the UK just a few months and speak little English, and most send money home.

In four months he thinks he has been able to find about six weeks' work.

But he has not had any for four days. Despite waiting since 7am, his British boss has not turned up. Iusti has a mobile phone but no credit, so can not ring him.

"Today, maybe. Tomorrow, maybe," he says about his prospects for getting work.

"I get about £40, £60 a day, boss takes about £300, £400. Cash, no taxes. Three day work, three day no work. Two day work, five day no work.

"In Romania is £100 to £150 a month, £10 for one day. Not work every day in Romania. No money in Romania. Problem. I will send money back to Romania. My girlfriend, Valentina, in Romania, I go to see her for Christmas."

His mother will send him the money so he can drive home, as he cannot afford it.

Iusti says he is torn over his situation - between being trapped in his home country where there is no work, and being so far away from home and living alone.

"I like it in England, everything is working, I like. Zero money, no like," he says. "It is difficult. Here money, no family. In Romania family, no money. Life here is get food money, smoke money, sleep."

While Iusti waited patiently, other hopefuls loitered at the exit to B&Q and wandered up and down Honeypot Lane, hoping to meet a builder in need of workers.

A security guard in the Selco car park watched them and residents looked on with distaste, frowning at their blatant touting for work.

One woman, who has lived in Harrow all her life but asked not to be named, said an average morning would see around 100 or so men congregating, with groups sleeping in nearby Queensbury Park during the summer.

She said: "They are quite intimidating in just the way that they are, their whole persona. They are quite aggressive. I have seen them knocking on people's vans saying, 'give me work'.

"They also live around here and treat the place like it was a pigsty - they throw their rubbish out on the street. It has been going on for as long as I can remember, at least a year. I think it has increased because of word of mouth."

The woman said she recently caught one man breaking into her bins, saw another steal a children's scooter from a garden and has heard of others breaking into cars and stealing. Now she and her neighbours are fed up.

She said: "It is not a way of life that we are used to. I am not used to seeing this here and I am not young, but I am not that old. It is just seeing all the changes (that makes me fed up). The economies are just so unbalanced. I know that there are kids around here who can't get jobs.

"No one minds people that work and put into our economy instead of taking it out. It doesn't weigh up. You can't congregate like that and be doing it for any other reason than finding work and paying no tax and insurance.

"We have all got it hard. Why should they have it easy? I don't care who you are or where you come from, as long as you are all contributing equally."

Gabriel Parlac, who runs Gabriel Construction in Wembley and lives nearby, said the situation was "embarrassing".

He said: "I don't like it, to be honest. I have heard a story that someone (a builder) took a group on site and at the end of the day some stuff was stolen from the house where they were working.

"I don't know if it is true or not, but I don't want anything to do with these kind of people. We pay taxes, it is just not right right, not fair."

Anna, who works in a nearby burger van, said the workers had congregated in the area since August last year. But she was not aware of them causing problems beyond stopping cars and vans and looking for any work they can get their hands on.

She said: "They are not making any trouble, they are just trying to find a job. Sometimes people stay a couple of weeks and then new ones come. I think perhaps they can't find jobs so go back home.

"It is really hard. I am not English, I am from Poland. I came 16 years ago and it was a completely different story. We had a business visa and I paid a lot of money to stay in this country, £1,000 in the first year and £3,000 for the next three years, and then later on we joined the EU.

"I came with one spoon to this country, and we work very hard. We pay all the taxes and they should do that. But to be honest it is too late now. I think we let too many in."

After two hours of waiting in the drizzle, Iusti's boss had still not turned up.

"Today, no coming for work. No food today, no bread. Zero food at home, it was finished yesterday," he said.

With that, the cold young man turned on his heel and crossed the road, heading back to his estate and the lonely life of sharing a house with 13 people he hardly knows.

A spokeswoman for B&Q said: "B&Q Stanmore is working with local police authorities to discourage the use of the area outside of the store and its car park as a meeting point.

"The store is also supporting additional security measures in the area."