Where the Rich Live

The Daily Telegraph has released a map showing the average weekly salary across the UK. The Where the Highest Earners Live map uses new data from the Office for National Statistics.

You can click on the map or enter an address to find out the average weekly salary for any area in the UK (excluding Northern Ireland). The UK's highest earners all live London, in Wandsworth, Westminster, and Richmond upon Thames. The lowest weekly earners live in West Somerset.

The Telegraph has also released a map, using the same ONS data, which shows where the richest people live in each local authority area. The Richest Places in England and Wales allows you to see where the highest earners are concentrated in each area.

Not that The Telegraph is obsessed with wealth or anything but the map does not show where the poorest live in each local authority. In fact The Telegraph claim that the "map gives an indication of the places most likely to be hit hard by a proposed mansion tax". This is of course completely erroneous and a blatant attempt by the newspaper to try and paint a misleading picture of how many people would be affected by the proposed policy.

For example in London the map shows a large percentage of Waltham Forest in red. This would lead you to expect that the proposed mansion tax would affect a large number of people living in this local authority. In fact the proposed tax would affect no-one in the borough. This is of course true of most of the red areas shaded on the map.

Diamond Geezer has created a heat map of the number of people who would be affected by the mansion tax in London. Using data from the last census he found that in London that less than 3% will be affected by the tax. When you take into account that the highest earners live in London you can assume that this figure is much lower outside of London.