London, Aug 4 - Sometimes encouraged by landlords, British property agents are keeping out prospective east European tenants from renting properties, the BBC reported Tuesday.

Housing agents in Boston, a seaside town in east England, were found to be using illegal techniques to fend off foreign workers viewing properties that had been put up for rent, a BBC undercover investigation found.

One firm told a Polish worker an advertised property had already been let out while allowing a BBC television news employee to view the same property.

It is illegal in Britain to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, religious beliefs, national or ethnic origins.

Although one firm said it had created a new race-relations policy, human rights lawyers said the behaviour was a 'disturbing and shocking' breach of the Race Relations Act of 1976.

In addition, discrimination against potential tenants or even planning to do with a landlord is a breach of a mandatory code of practice drawn up by the National Association of Estate Agents.

The finding echoes similar problems in India, where Bollywood actor Emran Hashmi complained last week that a housing society in Mumbai had blocked his purchase of a luxury flat because he is a Muslim.

In the BBC report, an undercover reporter posing as a landlord was told by one estate agent employee, recorded covertly: 'You can tell as soon as they speak, you can't tell by looking at them; particularly the Eastern Europeans.