More than 70 organisations in Sheffield, including the council, now offer a commitment to create "a culture of welcome and hospitality in contrast to the hostility every day in the papers".

Yorkshire has long provided a home to the biggest proportion of asylum seekers in Britain, housing about a quarter of the total, and Sheffield now wants to put itself at the forefront of that effort.

City of Sanctuary committee chairman Inderjit Bhogal said: "A lot of people have come to live among us from situations of extreme danger and violence, like Darfur. The people who come amongst us aren't just running away because they think it's a good idea to come and live in Britain.

"They're coming here because they think their lives are in danger. We want to create good relationships among people, help eliminate myths and misrepresentation and stereotypes.

"We want to get people to meet and realise that these people are human beings. They're not just facts and figures, they're faces with families who have stories to tell."

The greatest proportion of asylum seekers coming into Sheffield end up in the Burngreave and Pitsmoor area, a deprived inner-city suburb that housed the first wave of immigrants in the 1950s and has continued that role to this day, becoming a melting pot of different ethnicities, faiths and cultures.

Latest statistics show that almost half the local population is non-white, and the latest birth statistics show that 35 per cent of children are born to mothers whose home language is Urdu/ Punjabi, 32 per cent English, 11 per cent Arabic and nine per cent Somali. Thirty-five different languages are spoken among families with young children.

The suburb recently hit national headlines when 16-year-old Jonathan Matondo was shot dead in what locals described as postcode gang warfare in the area – the sixth shooting incident there in six months.

But Mr Bhogal said that tensions there were more down to petty neighbourhood rivalries that could be found on any street in Britain than any widespread problem.

"If you've got people for different parts of Sudan or different Iraqi communities and people of different Muslim backgrounds there can be tensions, of course there can be, but mostly it's just neighbours treading on each other's nerves."

Maureen Griffiths, an activist with the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which Jonathan attended, said: "We're concerned there are big groups of children in the area with nothing to do at night, many of them don't bother going to school or speak any English.

"People are coming together to address this head-on, running youth groups, helping teach English – but sometimes it seems what we do is just a drop in the ocean."

Paul Ottaway, 53, who helps run the Burngreave Vestry Hall community centre and volunteers for Assist Sheffield, a charity helping support destitute asylum seekers, said: "We have a very mixed community here and it is a tolerant area, relationships between different ethnic groups are fairly good.

"More recently there's been quite a lot of Eastern European people come in, mainly from Slovakia, who don't speak English and there's been a few tensions with that community, but in large Burngreave is an area that's very accepting."

Mr Ottaway said that most of the asylum seekers were very keen to work, learn English, and assimilate into the wider community – and that most residents believed that the different waves of incomers enrich the area.

But debate in wider Sheffield over the benefit of being a City of Sanctuary is more mixed, with local newspapers regularly carrying letters complaining that the council should help those who have paid taxes all their life before helping asylum seekers.

Mr Bhogal said: "It is fair to say there has been a mixed response.

"There are those that say this is just about 'do-gooders' who live in the posh end of the city and don't actually have anything to do with Burngreave.

"But actually, I live in Burngreave, I'm talking about my neighbours. And while it may not be the rich end financially, it's far richer in cultural mix, and I know which area I'd prefer to live in."