Britain's household wealth divide 'highly skewed towards the top'

The richest 10% of British households owned 45% of the wealth between 2012 and 2014, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), which said it was "highly skewed towards the top."

That compared to the poorest 50% households owning just 9% of household wealth during the same period, the Wealth and Assets Survey found.

The survey found that the "aggregate total wealth of all private households in Great Britain was £11.1trn, an increase of 18% from the previous period. But while total aggregate wealth increased by 21% for the richest 10%, it rose by just 7% for the poorest, the report said, adding that median total wealth increased by 4% from £216,500 to £225,100.

"The distribution of wealth is highly skewed towards the top," the report said, adding that the "wealth of the least wealthy 10% of households accounted for less than half of 1% of aggregate total." It added: "The wealth held by the top 10% of households was around five times greater than the wealth of the bottom half of all households combined and, over 875 times greater than that of the least wealthy 10% of households."

The south-east had the highest percentage of "wealthy" households, with 22% being worth slightly more than £1m, which was enough to "belong to the wealthiest 10% of households in Great Britain. In comparison, only 2% of households in the North East and 4% of households in Wales held sufficient wealth to fall into the top wealth decile," they said.