Estate agents' racism blamed for 'isolationism' of Asian families communities

Amid the cherry blossoms, box hedges and Ford Mondeos of the middle-class Heaton district in north Bradford lie clues to one of Britain's most imperceptible forms of alleged racial prejudice.

Neta Khan, 35, an Asian mother waiting for one of her children yesterday at the gates of St Bede's Grammar School, offered her opinion as to why so few of her Asian friends had moved the half-mile from Manningham's down-at-heel Lumb Lane district, scene of last July's riots. "Because at least five had walked into estate agents and received the same suggestion, 'Have you tried a Manningham address?'," she said.

Although estate agents deny the accusation, Mrs Khan's view bears out research by Leeds University that suggests estate agents and council housing officers are contributing to ethnic segregation by deliberately steering Asians and whites to separate areas.

Previous studies have suggested that estate agents have been happy for commercial reasons to let Asian families move into white areas. Once they arrive, white residents have been persuaded to move out for fear that the value of their houses will be undermined. More transactions mean more fees.

The university's research, the first to analyse the mobility of middle-class Asians in Britain, found evidence to suggest that estate agents have now in effect erected a wall between white and non-white areas by actively discouraging Asians from leaving their "ghettos".

The study dismisses the popular view that Asians stay put because they are not interested in "mixed" areas and prefer the security of monoculturalism, a view given some credence by the Foreign Office minister Peter Hain at the weekend with his observation that some Muslim immigrants tended to be "very isolationist in their own behaviour and their own customs". The researchers believe Asians want to move, it is others who are stopping them.

Deborah Phillips, a geographer who has mapped the housing motivations and aspirations of 440 Asian families, said Asians were highly aspirational in the property market. But when they went to estate agents' offices, they were routinely guided away from affluent districts – often on the basis of misinformation.

"It's still the view that areas will go downhill if you get too many black families moving in," said Ms Phillips. "People are going in and asking for details of a property in a certain area and being told, 'You don't want to live there because of the sort of area it is'."

Heaton's Asians provided a caveat; that good spoken English is likely to assist progress through estate agents. Gulshana Qayoum, 27, an accountancy graduate, said: "Some Asians are a little hesitant and are persuaded into areas where there are few whites." One of her neighbours, Dravid Khan, 67, said: "I took my son along [to the estate agents] and it helped. I was getting nowhere."

There were allegations in a recent report by the Chartered Institute of Housing that if an Asian family moved into a street that was mainly white, estate agents notified residents of a potential fall in property values, prompting the street's rapid transition into a predominantly Asian area. "This is financially and socially damaging for everyone except estate agents, who make windfall profits from the rapid turnover," the report said. A Bangladeshi woman told researchers: "I think what they're trying to do is maintain that ghetto that they put you in."

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which represents 8,000 estate agents, said: "This is completely unacceptable if it is true. If the researchers can give use the names of any our members involved we will take action."

The Leeds University study, which will be published in full in the autumn, backs the view that the best intentions of Asians to integrate are being nipped in the bud by estate agents. And when a few are allowed to "slip through the net", the reception is often enough to put off others.

In Leeds, Indian Sikhs have moved into areas such as Roundhay, only to find a racist undercurrent which prevents full assimilation. Sikhs, like the Jewish community in Leeds Jews before them, tend to recluster into small monocultural groups instead.

Fear of racism has also made people unwilling to be the first into new areas, the university study shows. Some families move back downmarket because their exposure to racism has been so severe.

The path towards segregation, highlighted as a critical problem in reports into last summer's riots in northern England, is accelerated by the violent crime, vandalism and drugs on some estates making life there an unthinkable prospect for some Asians.

Comments to researchers included: "The white people living there, you get a lot of stick off them;" and "I knew an Asian family who used to get hassled more or less every day." The ghetto security evidently goes beyond the simple convenience of being near to mosques, specialist shops or popular schools.

Solutions to segregation are a point of contention. The council at Oldham, where segregation was criticised in the Ritchie report into the cause of last May's riots, has declared that it will not interfere in Asian community housing choices.

The answer, according to Anne Power, professor of social policy at the London School of Economics, is strong law enforcement on estates where, in the worst cases, the law has, in effect, "ceased to operate".

Ms Power said: "Our findings showed that existing residents on the estates want to be seen as welcoming newcomers, but there is often a feeling of powerlessness over making things better – no stake and no say. If people are treated like dirt, they'll behave that way. Give them responsibility and they'll use it."

Efforts to improve the position include the practice in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, of introducing several families to an area at a time. The attitude of estate agents, however, appears to be to ensure that as few Asian families as possible are allowed to move into white areas.

'I'm glad I got in before the social engineering'

DAWOOS KHAN

Mr Khan was one of the first Asians to move into Heaton. "I'm just glad I got in early, probably before people were thinking about how areas could be engineered one way or another," the taxi driver, aged 54, said.

He bought his stone semi in Heaton for £50,000 16 years ago. But, like others there, he believes the flow of Asians from Manningham to the more prosperous Heaton area has been slow.

"Something's stopping people moving," he said. "It's a shame because it's a wonderfully mixed community. My next door neighbours are white, and the neighbours beyond them are white, and we get on so well."

Driving his taxis around Bradford equips him with knowledge of how communities, many of them Asian, can quickly slide.

Mr Khan's move has earned his children the kind of education, at St Bede's Grammar, that is out of the reach of many of his colleagues at his taxi firm he has worked at for 12 years. "A lot rests on being guided into the right direction by estate agents and being ambitious for yourself when buying a house," he said.

The lawn of his home drops down from a garage to a tree-lined street in a quiet labyrinth of stone-built semis. "Before I moved here there were just 10 Asians. Now it's more equal. It demonstrates that Asians being here doesn't mean that all white families have to move out."

GULSHANA QAYOUM

Ms Qayoum, 27, a welfare advice worker and mother of two small children, also feels frustration that one of Bradford's more affluent areas is closed to most Asians. "The issue of English speaking plays its part when some Asian families inquire about houses," she said. "Some are persuaded into areas where there are few whites. It's evident to me that the perception that some areas are good for white and some for Asians does still exist."

Ms Qayoum, an accountancy graduate, lives near the Cartwright Hall arts centre and Bradford University School of Management. The price of her house, £145,000, shows that Heaton is financially accessible to moderately well-off Asians. "The mix here has become more healthy over the last five years," she said.