The Home Office has announced the biggest fall in Eastern and Central European workers registering in the UK in five years.

The number of A8 migrants registering to work in the UK in the final three months of last year fell by 47% to around 27,000 compared with the same period in 2007.

Chris Slay, managing director of Acorn Recruitment, South West and skillsprovision.co.uk, told Recruiter: “The overall volume is dropping but there are still many people looking for opportunities to come to the UK.

“It’s not just Eastern Europeans, but other workers from Europe - that’s why I have got 7 Portuguese workers in my office today looking for work. There’s much more fluidity in the market than there used to be.”

Slay says that  he placed 25 workers from Eastern Europe in the first six weeks of the year, which was up on the same period last year.

Marc Vanling, managing director of Europe Solutions, told Recruiter that the fall in the zloty against the pound since last year meant that it was still attractive for Polish people to work here.  However, he says that most of the Poles he places have been here for a couple of years. “This is easier than having to fly them over,” he says.

Adam Lynk, managing director of More Consultancy Group, says there are definitely fewer Poles coming here. “I don’t care where they come from if they have the skills. They could come from Mars as long as they have right visa,” he adds.

The A8 accession countries are: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.