THOUSANDS of Polish nationals throughout the South West will now have access to an honorary consul based in Trowbridge.

The Polish Ambassador to the UK has opened their sixth honorary consular office in Trowbridge serving the South West of England with a seventh soon to open in Cardiff.

The Trowbridge office was launched on Wednesday during a visit by Professor Arkady Józef Rzegocki, the Republic of Poland Ambassador to the UK.

Mr Rzegocki said: "It is very important for Poland. There is a huge Polish community in the South West of England, we have at least 70,000 people here.

"If Polish people wanted advice on passports or other problems, they had to go to London or Manchester."

"The opening of this honorary consuls office shows how important the relations are and how many new issues we will have. I think we have a lot to do and a lot in common in our past and a lot in common in our future."

Mr Rzegocki also met the Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire, Mrs Sarah Rose Troughton; Cllr Stuart Wheeler, the chairman of Wiltshire Council, and the Mayor of Trowbridge, Cllr Denise Bates.

The visit was arranged by Dr Simon Selby, 54, from Trowbridge, who will become Poland’s honorary consul general for the South West. It took place at the Polish Catholic Mission and Club in Waterworks Road.

The Republic of Poland already has Consul Generals in Belfast, Edinburgh and Manchester.

Dr Selby said his wife, Agata Supinska, is Polish, and he has spent time over the past few years advising Polish people on passport applications and legal matters.

"I will be advising people for an hour or so after mass on Sundays and by appointment," he said. Dr Selby will help Polish people living in Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset.

During his visit, Mr Rzegocki was presented with a replica Second World War Enigma machine owned by Dr Selby and put together by Andrzej Godlewski, who spent three months working on it and making the case.

The Polish people played a major role in supplying the military intelligence which enabled the Allied Forces to decipher the German Enigma codes before the Second World War.

The Enigma code was broken by the Polish General Staff’s Cipher Bureau in December 1932, with the aid of French-supplied intelligence material obtained from a German spy.

The portable machines were later used by Alan Turing at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire to decipher the military codes used by Nazi Germany and its allies during the war.