POLITICAL campaign leaflets in Liverpool will be sent out in Polish as well as in English ahead of the May elections as parties seek to tap into the city’s booming Polish population.

Steve Radford, leader of the minority Liberal group in Liverpool Town Hall, came up with the idea after visiting Polish constituents who were unaware they could register to vote.

He said providing Polish residents with information about the May 3 election will encourage them to vote and give them a greater sense of community involvement.

Cllr Radford, who represents Tuebrook, also hopes the Polish vote will help stop the assault of the far-right BNP, which has nine candidates in Liverpool.

He has prepared the leaflets with the help of some Polish priests and is to start delivering them this week.

He said: “I decided to do this after visiting constituents last week. I realised that several Polish families who’d moved into the area were not registered to vote.

“The number of Polish residents in Liverpool has grown significantly. Many of them are relative newcomers and only speak limited English and perhaps don’t realise they have the right to vote and even if they do, they don’t know how to go about it.

“We will also target other ethnic communities but we are starting with the Polish as it’s such a large group.”

The Liberals are planning to send the information out by email as well as in leaflet form, and have engaged several mem- bers of the Polish community to help them translate the information into Polish.

Cllr Radford said: “We want to get the information out to as many of Liverpool’s Polish residents as possible.

For a copy of the text of our leaflet see below on the blog - Vote for candidates to help your neighbourhood, not gas your neighbours