Page Hall in Sheffield has seen a huge influx of Slovakian Roma, who say they want to give their children the chance of a better future in the UK. But rubbish, noise and gangs of young people have put them on collision course with other residents

As night fell over Page Hall in Sheffield on Thursday evening, Barrie Rees started layering up. Thinsulate hat, gloves, a warm jacket, sturdy trainers, his two walking sticks. He hooked an electronic cigarette on a cord around his neck, and hoped someone else would bring a pen and paper to note down observations. The 64-year-old was ready to go out on patrol.

Rees limped his way lightly down the tightly packed terraced streets of his north Sheffield neighbourhood to the Pakistani Advice Centre on Page Hall Road, where he was meeting other members of the recently formed Page Hall Residents Association.

"They called us vigilantes," said Rees, "What a joke! Look at me and my sticks. Usually there's another on a mobility scooter. In summer we had a pregnant lady with us. Vigilantes! Couldn't be anything further from the truth. We're just a group of ordinary local people who don't like being intimidated in our own neighbourhood, trying to make the newcomers understand how life works here."

It was people like Rees whom Sheffield MP David Blunkett no doubt had in mind when he gave an interview this week in which he warned that tensions between local people and Slovakian Roma migrants in this part of his constituency could escalate into rioting unless action was taken to improve integration.

An emergency police patrol officer responds to a 999 call in Page Hall. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

"If everything exploded, if things went really wrong, obviously the community would be completely devastated. We saw this in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham all those years ago when I first became home secretary. We saw that community itself were the losers, you know, that things inside here implode. It's not the places outside that cop it, it's the community," said Blunkett.

In an interview with BBC Radio Sheffield the former home secretary also accused the government of "burying their head in the sand" over the scale of Roma settlement in the UK and said the Roma community had to make more of an effort to fit in with British culture: "We have got to change the behaviour and the culture of the incoming community, the Roma community, because there's going to be an explosion otherwise. We all know that."

By the time the interview aired and had caught the attention of the national media, Blunkett was on a plane to India, his press secretary saying he was uncontactable for at least a fortnight. By Thursday Blunkett had come out of purdah to say he had never warned of riots. But the touchpaper had been lit.

Come the end of the week pretty much every media outlet in the country had descended on this working-class suburb of north Sheffield. A chip shop owner appeared on the front page of the Daily Express claiming two Roma teenagers had tried to sell him a baby for £250. The Daily Star ran a front page story warning that "Roma migrant invasion will start UK riots". The Mail said the "first signs of vigilante action" were appearing, with talk of street patrols roaming the area after dark to "educate" the Slovakian incomers in how to behave – a development which brought to mind the terrifying militia that have tried to drive gypsies out of villages such as Gyöngyöspata in Hungary.

It was about 6.45pm on Thursday night when the first police patrol car arrived in Page Hall. They'd been summoned by a resident from one of the two-up, two-down terraces complaining about a gang of Roma children making a racket outside their house.

"GUYS," yelled an officer as he got out of the car and ran up Hinde Street toward a group of 20 children hanging about. "GO HOME. NOW!" The children scarpered like sparrows. The Page Hall residents' patrol – which on Thursday comprised Rees, a half-Jamaican/half-Scottish woman called Fatima, a white woman called Beverley, a Pakistani landlord who asked to be known just as Mr Khan, and a young white couple named Jonathan and Amy – were pleasantly surprised.

"First time I've ever seen them even get out of their car," said Fatima. "Usually the police just drive past. It's probably because the media is here."

Patrick Pokuta, 17, originally from Slovakia, wants to be a mechanic. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

The group gathered around the two officers. "Be honest. You wouldn't want to live here, would you?" Fatima asked the policemen, who were in short sleeves and stab vests despite temperatures having dropped to 4C. "I completely agree with your point," said one of the officers, a friendly chap in his 30s. "It's good that Nick Clegg has got involved now. That's what people around here want – for a local MP with an important position like he's got to raise these concerns at a national level."

The officer admitted he had no authority to order the children off the street until 9pm, when a Section 30 order gives police the power to disperse groups from public places. Most nights they were called to Page Hall, he said, and after 9pm they tried to take the youngest children home – "but you can't fit 60 of them in the back of the patrol car, can you?"

On Friday Sheffield council decided to renew the current Section 30 order until 11 February 2014, given the tension in the area.

South Yorkshire police says it doesn't have crime figures available for Page Hall specifically, but that anecdotally crime does not appear to have increased significantly since large numbers of Slovakian Roma started to move in three years ago. "It's anti-social behaviour which is a problem rather than crime, really," said one of the officers on patrol.

Nobody knows for sure how many Roma people have come to Sheffield since Slovakia joined the EU in 2004. The council's best guess is that 1,500 eastern European Roma children now live in the city as a whole, with around 500 in the small Page Hall area. Miroslav Sandor, a Roma community worker in Page Hall, gives a much higher estimate. He thinks there may be 600-900 large families in the city, mostly concentrated in Page Hall. A good proportion of them come from Sandor's own home village of Bystrany in south-eastern Slovakia, and the nearby hamlets of Žehra and Letanovce. Though the migrants come and go, the flow is predominantly in one direction. Three buses run by Interbus make the 30-hour journey overland from Slovakia to Sheffield each week but just two go back in the other direction.

In Page Hall rubbish fills the gutters, and stained mattresses and sofas are piled up in gardens. Sheets taped to windows as makeshift curtains fail to disguise 10 or more people piled up watching TV in tiny front rooms. Tinny music fills the air each time a group of teenagers walks past with a mobile phone. Mazher Iqbal, a Labour councillor and cabinet member for communities and inclusion, says house prices in Page Hall have dropped out of proportion with other areas of the city. He is reluctant to accept the newcomers have caused the litter problem. Instead, he blames the weather. "The wind can blow off the bin lids," he says, adding that the Roma did not initially understand how to recycle.

The Page Hall Residents Association is incredulous at the suggestion the weather is responsible for the mess. They show me their private Facebook page where they upload pictures and observations made on their regular patrols. There are pictures of bins crawling with maggots and videos they've made of noisy groups congregating outside their houses at 1am. They complain of washing being stolen from the line; garden furniture going missing and suspicions that a stream of scantily clad teenage girls filing through one particular garden gate are selling themselves in an upstairs flat.

As well as the baby sale rumours, there have been other unsavoury claims about a cat-eating newcomer who dumped carrier bags full of feline body parts. On the baby front, South Yorkshire police insists it did a thorough investigation, including a trawl of CCTV footage and a search of all babies born in the Page Hall area, but could find no evidence of any missing child. It could perhaps have been "merely a joke in poor taste" said a spokeswoman.

But is there going to be a riot? Absolutely, says Colin Barton of the Halal chip shop on Page Hall Road. He's the one who claims to have been offered the baby back in August and swears the sellers were deadly serious. He thinks it's entirely possible many Roma babies are born at home, their births never registered. "If something doesn't change round here there will be a pitched battle. There will be fights eventually. This is a boiling pot ready to explode."

Barton scoffs at the suggestion his views about the Roma – that they don't work but somehow have enough money to hang around in the betting shop a few doors down – are racist. "How can I be racist?" he said, gesturing to his wife, Nicola, as she served up fish and chip suppers for £2. Nicola is from Sri Lanka and has brown skin. She is just as fed up with the incomers as her husband. "You are in England, not Slovakia. You need to abide by our rules," she scolded a Slovak outside the chippie who had been telling the Guardian that there was nothing wrong with standing around in large groups on street corners at night.

Fatima, one of the Page Hall Residents Association volunteer patrollers, takes a different tack. She calls out cheerfully to every youth she passes, insisting on having her photo taken with young girls holding an impromptu mobile phone photoshoot on the main road. "I want to know these kids' names," said Fatima. "I want to be able to say, 'Hello Christian, how's your mum?' We used to know everybody around here."

Barrie Rees says they try to be friendly to the Roma. Born in Wales, he remembers arriving in Sheffield as a young man and the Pakistani family next door coming round and inviting him in for tea. "It's about mixing in and integrating rather than intimidating people. If they behaved properly we would have no objections to them whatsoever. This has always been a mixed area and we like it that way."

The Pakistani Advice Centre, set up 20 years ago to advise south Asian immigrants, now has a wider role to help all newcomers. It runs sessions each Monday to encourage Roma parents to send their children to school.

Sandor, a Roma community worker funded by Sheffield council, was tense and unhappy, carrying around a clipboard containing all the articles written about his community. "I'm really upset," he said. "People are blaming me." For a number of months Sandor has been running sporadic "official" street patrols with paid wardens in high-visibility jackets. It is his job, Sandor says, to educate his countrymen on how to behave.

He would not let the Guardian go out on patrol with him, and when he saw us chatting to a group of youths at around 8pm on Wednesday night he told them in Slovakian to not talk to us. Fatima, from the Page Hall Residents Association, says the unofficial patrols only began because they felt Sandor was not doing his job properly. "He's friends with them all and just chats to them rather than moving them on and teaching them what's what," she said.The Roma chatted happily to Fatima outside the SK supermarket, which sells Slovakian meats and cheeses.

Mario Sandor, a 37-year-old father of five, said he just wanted a better life for his family. "In Romania I can't a get a job because I am black," he said. "Here I've worked stacking shelves in Tesco and in a sausage factory. My children get a proper education. That's why I'm here – I want them to be lawyers and doctors."

Seventeen-year-old Daniel Dunka, who moved to Sheffield with his seven brothers and one sister seven years ago, said he wanted to get a good job, maybe as a teaching assistant. Patrick Pokuta, another 17-year-old studying business at college, said he wanted to be a mechanic. Neither could see what the problem was with them hanging around on the street at night. "There is nowhere else to go," they say.

Ten-year-old Christian Kandrak had only been in Sheffield since February but had already picked up a South Yorkshire twang as he explained he had dreams of becoming a paid interpreter: "I like to be in England. I want to learn English so that I can get a good job, to make money. That's why Slovakians come here."