Romanians arrive on C4's Benefits Street: Meet the 15-year-old child bride and her husband who ransack bins for scrap metal... and the family of FOURTEEN living in one house

A controversial television programme shining a light on the world of benefit claimants lifts the lid on a new host of social problems next week as tensions flare up between residents and Romanian migrants.

 
The forthcoming episode of Channel 4's Benefits Street documentary shows two separate sets of new arrivals to the fraught community of James Turner Street in Birmingham, where 90 per cent of residents receive state handouts.
Longstanding inhabitants, most of whom do not have jobs, are greeted by a family of 14 crammed in to a house built for four - and while they did not claim any benefits, their line of work leaves something to be desired.

A gang of professional bin-raiders, scrabbling through the rubbish, a child bride and a family with only one English speaker - who is 12 - become a short-lived feature of the community as they hunt around for scrap metal to sell.
And while they may not last long, they are soon replaced by another group of 14 - this time all adult, male labourers who aimed to provide for their families at home, but instead find themselves cruelly deceived about how much money they can expect to make in the UK.
Shockingly, the family features a 20-year-old man boasting to the camera about his child bride - aged just 15 and a half - and defending their union as 'tradition' on the Channel 4 documentary series.
Another showed a £400-a-month property being shared by 14 Romanians, who claim they have been brought to England like 'slaves'.
'White Dee' – the self-proclaimed ‘mother of the street’ – is also seen to draw battle lines with the migrants after the council refuse to collect the street's rubbish because it has been ransacked.

The Romanian family is later shown collecting pieces of scrap metal, which they sell to dealers in order to make ends meet - since none of them can work legally in the UK.
The couple are shown talking about their 'marriage' later on in the episode. Despite the girl being too young to legally marry either in Romania or in the UK, her 'husband', called only Alex, said: 'This scares people in England because she is a minor. In my country it’s alright – no problem.'

The Home Office describes child marriage as 'unacceptable', and Lib Dem MP John Hemming told The Sun: 'The rules are very simple, it is illegal here. What may be acceptable in another country is not necessarily acceptable here in the UK.'
Both sets of Romanians - an extended family and then a group of farm labourers - will be shown occupying the same small house on James Turner Street in Birmingham - dubbed Benefits Street for the programme because more than 90 per cent of its residents do not work.
Though it was originally designed for a family of four, the small property - which is rented privately for £400 a month - is seen crammed with people even as the utilities are cut off after missed bills.
Only one of the first family, a 12-year-old boy, speaks any English, while the other members stirred up tensions on the street by rooting through bins for scrap metal to sell.
They heap up disused appliances, pots and pans and old buggies, which are then sold on for barely enough money to keep themselves fed. One family member admits on the programme that neither her nor any other family members are legally entitled to work in the UK.

Florian, an adult member of the family, defends his 'business' to the cameras, saying: 'We don’t steal, we just take the rubbish that people don’t want’
‘We make £150 in two weeks – so we have to save every penny in order to pay our rent. We have to sell scrap metal because we don’t have the right paperwork to get a normal job.’ 

‘We haven’t had a penny from the Government – we’re not interested in handouts, we can manage on our own. We don’t need money or food – we just need permits to work, so we have live like regular citizens.
'We know we are not wanted here’.
Other residents of the street hit back at the the Romanians' activities - in particular after the council stops collecting waste because the bin bags had been torn open.
One, known by her friends as 'White Dee', says: 'People move into a house and two days later they're rooting through your bin bags, that's not a nice thing and we don't want it on our road.'
Another described the Romanians as 'little tramps'.
Residents claim that the situation with the rubbish was so bad, after no collections were made for two weeks, that rats were crawling through the streets.

In a bizarre twist, some residents feel compelled to force the council's hand by piling up sacks of rubbish to form a blockade of the road while singing 'we shall not be moved' - which soon causes the refuse to be collected.
The family is eventually evicted after they couldn't keep up their rent payments.
They are soon replaced by another group of Romanians - fourteen men who had come to England on the promise of farm labour, paid at £40 per day.
But the promises turned sour as their boss held back most of their pay, and increased their workload to brutal 17-hour days, for which they receive just £10.
Commenting on their cramped conditions and bitter disappointment, Marius, one of the workers, says: 'We’re living like this because we have no choice – it’s just so we can provide for our children. In Romania we can’t provide them with anything. No parent can sit and watch while his child is crying through hunger.’
'We’ve been brought to England as slaves. We’re barely surviving with what we get paid here.
'The food that we did have has no run out... If only I knew I’d get into this situation, I’d have stayed in Romania.'
Indeed - the men eventually get into trouble with their bosses for attempting to report them to the police, and find themselves forced to pack up and leave at short notice.
The first episode of the show prompted complaints after scenes showed residents of the street explaining how they stole, cultivated drugs and fraudulently claimed benefits.
It was yesterday revealed that the police are called to deal with crimes on the street on a monthly basis.