Part of Swindon has become a little corner of Portugal for the last few days.

Three staff members of the Portuguese Consulate in London have been working for four days in the offices of Swindon Borough Council in Euclid Street.

And thousands of Portuguese passport holders, particularly from Swindon’s Goan community, have been getting their help.

The visits by the consulate staff have been organised by Councillors Laurenco Fernandes and Anabelle Pegado and community organisers Tony Vas and John Barreto.

Mr Vas said: “These sessions started last year and were hugely popular, people were queueing up outside.

“There were 12,000 people helped last year over four sessions of three days each.”

The main services provided by the consular staff are renewals of passports and citizenship cards and the registration of births to people who are Portuguese citizens.

Melinda Fernandes, 37, who lives in central Swindon, was one who made an appointment. She said: “I wanted to register my daughter who is 10 and renew my passport and my son’s.

“It’s so much easier that this is in Swindon. Other wise we’d have to take a whole day off. I’m a teaching assistant and I don’t get time off in term time – but because it’s in Swindon I could get away and didn’t have to take my children out of school for very long.”

Cllr Pegado said: “This makes it much easier for elderly people and people with disabilities who would have much more difficulty getting to London. These visits save everyone who come s here a lot of time and money.

She added: “We’re trying to reach more people who are Portuguese or Brazilian and who aren’t in the Goan community.

She said: “It’s not just people from Swindon who come, we had people from Ramsgate yesterday, Chippenham and Oxford and Coventry and Cambridge.”

Ana Teodoro is one of the consular staff working at Euclid Street this week, on her third visit. She said: “I always enjoy coming here, we are well looked after and the people we help always give us good feedback.

“It’s much more concentrated than our normal work - there are three of us here this week, and normally in our London offices there are 10 of us.

The consular officials were working in the council offices until Friday afternoon (March 8).

There are further sessions planned in Swindon for June and October.