Southall Broadway in west London is not only dominated by Indians, particularly Punjabis, but at least one of the leading pubs in the area even welcomes Indian currency.

At the Glassy Junction, a sign above the bar prominently states: "Rupees welcome here."

The pub staff, in Indian dhotis, pull pints of drinks for customers - all of them male and most of them Sikh. A map of Punjab hangs on the wall.

Down the road is the locality of Southall Broadway, where 88 per cent of residents are non-white.

Thirty years ago Asians were a minority; now more than three quarters of the residents are of Asian origin, many having emigrated from India, a report in The Times daily, said.

Spices hang in the air, the Best of Bhangra warbles from car radios; and Woolworths, the leading departmental store, has become the Himalaya Shopping Centre.

Piara Singh Khabra, a Sikh who came to Britain in the 1950s and is now Labour MP from Ealing Southall, envisages a different future for the area, where many Muslim refugees from Somalia now live.

"People from 20 different countries live side by side here," he told the daily.

"Indians are ambitious people. The people who came here to work in factories saved their money and now own businesses," he said.

At the time of the 2001 Census, of the 8,850 electoral wards in England and Wales, only 72, or 0.8 per cent, had no ethnic minorities at all.

The all-white areas are mainly in Wales and the rural Southwest and Northeast of England.

The figures also suggested that some communities are highly segregated. Twenty towns and cities have neighbourhoods where whites are in a minority.

In total, this is the case in 116 electoral wards.

More than half of these are in London, where whites are in a minority across two whole boroughs, Newham and Brent.

The least white ward in the country is Southall Broadway, where just 11.9 per cent, fewer than one in eight people, are white.

Figures also show that most big cities, including London, Manchester and Birmingham, have areas where less than half the population is white. Likewise northern cities such as Burnley, Oldham and Bradford, which has seen racial unrest.