The British press are always going to play up the "foreign crime threat" hysteria. The vast majority of organized crime in the UK still concerns homegrown British criminal networks of English/Scottish/Irish background. Organized crime in Liverpool, Glasgow, Nottingham, Manchester and Newcastle consists of 95% homegrown groups. And there are still a lot of homegrown groups active in Essex and Kent (whose operations extend into North, East and South London) as well as the Solihull/Birmingham area. All of these have international operations.

Regarding "foreign" organized crime in the UK the noteworthy ones at the moment are Albanian cocaine and hashish trafficking groups that are mostly active in the London and Birmingham area, the Turkish/Kurdish heroin trafficking groups in North London, Pakistani (mostly several Mirpuri and Pashtun families) heroin trafficking groups in Bradford, Birmingham, Oldham, Middlesbrough and Luton, Vietnamese marihuana trafficking groups in London, Lithuanian arms and contraband tobacco smuggling groups in London, Somali drug gangs in South London, Jamaican gang activity in London, Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester (though Jamaican gang activity isn't as endemic as it once has been), Tamil gangs in West London (also not as endemic as it once has been), Traveller families mostly in the Manchester area and some Maltese involvement in underground pornography and prostitution in London (though most London Maltese are nowadays regarded as British).