Stay away from 'run-down' Britain, Albanians warned

Government-funded social media campaign a costly failure’

- KATE DEVLIN

A government-funded advertising campaign depicts the UK as expensive, run-down and prejudiced - in a bid to dissuade Albanian migrants from coming to the country.

Videos used in the social media drive, designed to reduce the number of people on small boats crossing the Channel, show shops covered in graffiti and broken furniture scattered on a housing estate.

Titled “Stories from Britain”, they also contain Albanian refugees complaining about the cost of living in Britain and the prejudice they face, as part of a £3.75m-a-year project funded by the Foreign Office.

However, an internal Foreign Office document, seen by the i newspaper, found there was “limited evidence on the effectiveness” of what it dubbed a “dissuasive communications approach”.