BRITS are leaving the UK in their thousands in search of a better life abroad. Another Brit leaves every three minutes, the Institute for Public Policy Research has estimated. Former immigration control officer Liam Clifford set up globalvisas.com, a visa consultancy firm, 12 years ago. This year, he has seen a 400 per cent increase in enquiries for visas to countries such as Australia and Canada.

He says: “One of the reasons people cite is over-stretched public services in the UK. A lot of the time the trigger is that children are coming up for school age and they are going to be affected by crime and education issues.

“Because of immigration, even rural villages are now overstretched so people can’t just move out of the city any more.

“People don’t want to be seen as racist, but they feel they are not getting the services they require.”

In 2005 the difference between the number of people emigrating and those arriving in the UK was 185,000, the equivalent of adding just over 500 people a day to the UK population. There are now 5.5million expat Britons with the highest concentrations in Australia, Spain, the US, Canada and Ireland. Here we talk to Brits who have left the UK and take a look at the visa requirements for the top five destinations. Are you thinking of emigrating?