Regional gross disposable household income, UK: 1997 to 2023

• Gross disposable household income (GDHI) in the UK grew by 9.5% in 2023 when compared with 2022; GDHI in England grew by 9.6%, while GDHI in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales grew by 9.3%, 8.5% and 7.9%, respectively.
• Of the countries and regions classified as International Territorial Level (ITL) 1, London had the highest GDHI per head in 2023 where, on average, each person had £35,361 available to spend or save; the North East had the lowest at £19,977, compared with a UK average of £24,836.
• Westminster and City of London was the local area (ITL3) with the highest GDHI per head in 2023 at £79,555, which was over three times the UK average; Leicester had the lowest GDHI per head at £16,067.
• The ITL3 local areas showing the largest increases in total GDHI in 2023 were Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham (12.9%) and Barnet (11.5%); the local areas with the smallest increases in 2023 were the Isle of Anglesey (6.1%) and Tower Hamlets (6.6%).
• Some local area boundaries have been reclassified since the last release of this bulletin; please see Section 7: Data sources and quality for more information.

UK total gross disposable household income (GDHI) in 2023 was nearly £1.7 trillion. Of that, 86.5% was in England, 7.4% was in Scotland, 3.8% was in Wales and 2.3% was in Northern Ireland. When compared with the size of each country’s population, only England had a GDHI per head above the UK average.

Total GDHI in the UK increased by 9.5% between 2022 and 2023. Of the countries of the UK, only England exceeded this growth rate, with 9.6%. The smallest increase between 2022 and 2023 was in Wales, where total GDHI grew by 7.9%.

Table 1 provides an overview of GDHI for UK countries and International Territorial Level (ITL) 1 regions.

Of the 12 ITL1 regions, the region with the strongest growth in total GDHI in 2023 was the South West with 10.1%, followed by the North West with 9.8%. The lowest growths were in Wales and Northern Ireland, with 7.9% and 8.5%, respectively.

Four ITL1 regions had GDHI per head values above the UK average of £24,836. These were:

• London (£35,361 per head)
• the South East (£28,187 per head)
• the East of England (£25,732 per head)
• the South West (£24,854 per head)

The lowest value was in the North East (£19,977 per head).

At the International Territorial Level (ITL) 3, all 10 local areas with the highest gross disposable household income (GDHI) per head in 2023 were in London or the South East of England (Table 2).

The ITL3 region with the highest GDHI per head was Westminster and City of London where, on average, each person had £79,555 to spend or save. This is over three times the UK average of £24,836.

The 10 local areas with the lowest GDHI per head were all in the Midlands or the north of England. The ITL3 area with the lowest GDHI per head was Leicester where, on average, each person had £16,067 to spend or save.

A full breakdown of the income components flowing into and out of households, showing which components are having the greatest impact on household finances for each area, is available in the datasets linked from Section 5: Data on gross disposable household income.

At the ITL3 level, all 182 regions saw an increase greater than or equal to 6.1% in total GDHI between 2022 and 2023. Compared with the total UK growth of 9.5%, 75 ITL3 regions showed stronger growth while 101 regions had weaker growth.

The ITL3 regions showing the largest increases in total GDHI were Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham (12.9%) and Barnet (11.5%). The local areas with the smallest increases were the Isle of Anglesey (6.1%) and Tower Hamlets (6.6%).

GDHI figures include the effect of price inflation. The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) annual growth rate of 6.8% was equalled or exceeded by 180 of the 182 ITL3 regions. This compares with 2022 when 11 regions had GDHI growth greater than or equal to the CPIH figure of 7.9%. This might be interpreted as an increase in the real-terms value of disposable income. However, it is important to recognise that the CPIH does not account for any regional variation in the cost of living.

Variation within regions

ITL3 regions can vary within their parent ITL1 region. In London, there is wide variation between Westminster and City of London at £79,555 per head, and Barking & Dagenham and Havering at £24,410 per head. Wales has very little variation, with the highest ITL3 of Monmouthshire and Newport at £21,733 and the lowest in Neath Port Talbot at £18,827.

Figure 2 shows this variation, with ITL1 parent regions ordered highest to lowest by their per head values.

Figure 2: Variation in gross disposable household income per head

Gross disposable household income per head, ITL3 regions within their parent ITL1 region, 2023

Notes:

1. Estimates for 2023 are provisional.

Figure 3: Average gross disposable household income in your local area

Gross disposable household income per head for UK local authorities, 1997 to 2023

Notes:

1. City of London is not shown on the map because its GDHI per head is a large outlier value.
2. Estimates for 2023 are provisional.

Gross disposable household income

Gross disposable household income (GDHI) is the amount of money that all the individuals in the household sector have available for spending or saving after they have paid direct and indirect taxes and received any direct benefits. GDHI is a concept that is seen to reflect the “material welfare” of the household sector. The household sector includes residents of traditional households, as well as those living in communal establishments. GDHI also includes the business income of self-employed people.

International Territorial Levels

The UK geographies classification system, International Territorial Level (ITL), has superseded the Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS) classification system. ITL 2 and 3 have been updated in 2025. Please see Section 7: Data sources and quality for more information.

Per head

Estimates can be divided by the resident population of a country, region, or area to give a value per head. This can be a useful way of comparing regions of different sizes. Because GDHI is measured according to the residence of the person, not their place of work, GDHI per head is not subject to distortion from commuting. It does, however, include the entire population of an area, including children and retired people.

These statistics are labelled as official statistics in development.

Changes to the ITL region classification

This year we have adopted the 2025 update to the International Territorial Levels (ITL) geography framework. This is the first major update since the introduction of the ITL classification in 2021, to replace the old Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS) classification.

The new ITL classification is unchanged at the ITL1 level, still comprising Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the nine English regions.

At the ITL2 level, there are now 46 subregions (formerly 41), with new subregions in Wales, Scotland, and the North East, South West and East of England. The ITL2 level has been realigned to match as far as possible the emerging combined authorities with elected mayors, making it more relevant to current areas of economic interest. There are 15 currently agreed combined authorities, 12 of which match ITL2 subregions, and the other three are included in our supplementary datasets for city and enterprise regions (CER). These are all listed in this section.

At the ITL3 level, there are now 182 local areas (formerly 179), with new areas in all countries and regions except Northern Ireland, the North East, East Midlands and West Midlands.

At the local authority district (LAD) level, we have updated to the 2024 boundaries, giving a total of 361 local authority districts, unitary authorities, metropolitan districts, London boroughs and Scottish Councils.

Combined authorities included in our ITL dataset:

• Tees Valley (TLC3)
• North East (TLC4)
• Greater Manchester (TLD3)
• Lancashire (TLD4)
• Liverpool City Region (TLD7)
• York and North Yorkshire (TLE2)
• South Yorkshire (TLE3)
• West Yorkshire (TLE4)
• East Midlands (TLF1)
• West Midlands (TLG3)
• Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (TLH4)
• West of England (TLK5)

Combined authorities included in our city and enterprise regions dataset:

• Hull and East Yorkshire
• Greater Lincolnshire
• Devon and Torbay

Coherence and comparability

Figures for 2023 are provisional, as national estimates have not been through supply and use balancing at the time of this publication.

Some of the regional data sources we use also have considerable time lags. This means that the latest year is an estimate modelled on the previous year’s distribution. While these estimates only affect certain components of income, they can be more important in some areas than others.

We do not yet have updated estimates for the additional breakdown of population of the Scottish areas needed to create estimates for some International Territorial Level areas of Scotland (ITL2 and ITL3). We have therefore suppressed any estimates of gross disposable household income (GDHI) per head for 2023 in those areas from this release.

The figures in the accompanying datasets are all in current prices, which include the effect of price inflation, and are consistent with those published in the UK National Accounts, The Blue Book: 2024.

Quality and methodology information

See our Regional accounts methodology for guidance and methodology relating to regional gross disposable household income (GDHI). Our Regional accounts methodology guide provides an overview of the methodology used to compile regional accounts outputs.

More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Regional GDHI quality and methodology information (QMI).

Our Guide to sources of data on income and earnings outlines the different data sources and outputs that feed into the analysis of income and earnings within the UK. Further information on income and earnings statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and other government departments is also available.

Revisions

GDHI estimates in this release show revisions for the period 1997 to 2022.

All our estimates are subject to uncertainty. We revise our estimates annually for previous years to incorporate new information, correct statistical errors, and to adopt and test new statistical techniques.

More information on how we measure and communicate uncertainty for our surveys is available.

All revisions to our estimates follow our Revisions and corrections of errors policies. The main causes of revisions in this release are changes to our methods, and revised figures published in the UK National Accounts, The Blue Book: 2024. Regional GDHI is consistent with Blue Book 2024 and we will publish revised estimates next year to align with Blue Book 2025.

In line with Blue Book 2024, we have incorporated a new tax, the Warm Home Discount Scheme into our estimates for the household sector. We use the number of households to apportion this data to regions, in line with our Country and regional public sector finances methodology.

We have also introduced an improvement to our methods used to apportion farm rent data to ITL3 local areas, using local unit employment data for Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code A01 from the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR). We applied the proportions from this data to the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland country level farm rent data published by the devolved governments for 2023 and years before this where the ITL3 level breakdowns had not been produced by the devolved governments to replace our previous estimates. For England, we use the IDBR local unit data to complement our regionalising methods, which are based on ITL3 local area-level data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).