English Language Difficulties in Brent

One of the sets of stats in the report on the Public Realm contract that I have not seen before related to the numbers of people in the Borough who have difficulty with English communication.  It is broken out by ward below:

	Cannot Speak English Well	Cannot Speak English	Total	All Categories	% with Language Difficulties
Alperton	1,592	342	1,934	13,455	14.4%
Wembley	1,442	307	1,749	14,116	12.4%
Welsh Harp	1,054	197	1,251	13,103	9.5%
Dudden Hill	1,042	195	1,237	14,355	8.6%
Harlesden	1,269	220	1,489	16,154	9.2%
Queensbury	1,099	253	1,352	14,565	9.3%
Sudbury	1,129	188	1,317	14,251	9.2%
Tokyngton	1,102	243	1,345	14,509	9.3%
Dollis Hill	938	147	1,085	12,783	8.5%
Fryent	866	146	1,012	12,850	7.9%
Kensal	929	169	1,098	14,149	7.8%
Preston	1,023	187	1,210	14,793	8.2%
Stonebridge	1,008	200	1,208	15,998	7.6%
Willesden	1,046	180	1,226	14,885	8.2%
Barnhill	918	181	1,099	15,058	7.3%
Kenton	630	143	773	11,761	6.6%
Mapesbury	716	108	824	14,888	5.5%
Brondesbury	477	111	588	12,525	4.7%
Northwick	547	112	659	12,398	5.3%
Kilburn	580	112	692	16,230	4.3%
Queens Park	457	89	546	14,554	3.8%

The average is 8%, although the total of all the wards does not add up to the total population of the Borough.  I assume that this is because some people did not answer the census question.

These figures are actually somewhat lower than I imagined that they would be.  Lack of Engl;ish tends to be a major problem in my experience, and I thought it was more widespread than this.  There isn't any magic bullet to deal with it.  Not least because we have such a variety of languages.  In somewhere like Tower Hamlets, the non English language is generally Bengali.  In Brent, you can easily find half a dozen languages in the same street.