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News: Where the rich live & how they got their money

A new map of wealth in the UK reveals where the rich live and how they got their money.

Moreover it predicts that Britain will have the highest concentration of high net worth households in the G7 within the next decade.

Unsurprisingly, the capital is home to 13% of the richest individuals in Britain, while 8% live in Hampshire. The four postcodes home to the highest proportion of the UK’s wealthy are all in London and the South-East, with London and Hampshire as the top ranked counties.

However, the north of England also features strongly with Yorkshire placed third and Lancashire sixth in the list of counties with the highest proportion of wealthy individuals. Cheshire, famous for housing some of the UK’s most high profile sports stars in Alderley Edge, is in eleventh position.

The report from Barclays Wealth Insights, based on data from the Economist Intelligence Unit and Ledbury Research, has positive news for Scotland as well, with areas in Midlothian and Dunbartonshire featuring in the twenty postcodes housing the highest proportions of wealthy individuals.

Business success and the property price boom will help to drive wealth in the UK ahead of its counterparts around the world by 2017, according to the report.

It found that business success is now more likely than inheritance to be the number one route to riches. Some 71% of respondents, representative of the top 5% of the population in wealth terms, listed savings from earnings as one of their three key sources of wealth.

That was followed by property with 44% and inherited wealth at 30%.

Mark Kibblewhite, managing director of private banking at Barclays Wealth, said: "There has rarely been a better time to be living in the UK.”

"Not only are we expected to have the highest proportion of high net worth households in the G7 in 10 years' time but wealth is now truly open to everyone, with enterprise and endeavour the main route to riches."  

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