ONS releases household income data for UK regions and local authorities, 1997 to 2024

The Office for National Statistics published its annual regional Gross Disposable Household Income (GDHI) estimates on 19 August 2026, covering every UK International Territorial Level region, local authority and combined authority from 1997 to 2024. GDHI measures what households actually have left to spend or save after wages, investment returns and benefits are added, and taxes and other deductions are taken off — making it one of the clearest available snapshots of real financial headroom for ordinary households.

The figures show London’s GDHI per head reached £35,361 in 2023, compared with a UK average of £24,836 — a gap of more than £10,500. The North East recorded the lowest of any ITL1 region at £19,977, nearly £5,000 below the national average. At the extreme end, Westminster and the City of London combined posted £79,555 per head, more than three times the UK average, driven by concentrated investment income and high earnings in central London.

For Kent households and businesses, the dataset matters because ONS publishes separate GDHI tables broken down to individual local authority level — covering areas including the Kent County Council area and Medway Council. That means year-on-year figures exist for councils such as Canterbury, Dover, Folkestone and Hythe, and Maidstone. Bodies like Kent County Council, Medway Council and the Kent and Medway Economic Partnership can use the data to support funding bids and economic development plans, while businesses can treat local GDHI per head as a rough indicator of consumer spending power in any given part of the county.

But the data has limits. Critics note that GDHI per head is an average — it doesn’t capture inequality within an area, and it isn’t adjusted for local cost of living. A Kent district that looks close to the national average could still contain pockets of genuine financial hardship that the headline figure masks.

The 2024 figures for individual Kent authorities are published in the ONS local authority GDHI dataset and should be taken directly from the official ONS tables for precise values. The series runs back to 1997, giving analysts nearly three decades of consistent data to track whether household finances in Kent are improving or stagnating relative to regional and national trends. ONS typically revises earlier years when new data sources become available, so figures from previous releases can shift slightly.

Key information

• The full GDHI dataset, including local authority breakdowns for Kent, is available through the ONS website and via Nomis, the official UK labour market statistics service operated by ONS
• Data covers 1997 to 2024 at current prices, published as both total income (£ millions) and per head figures to allow comparison between areas of different population sizes
• Kent County Council, Medway Council and NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board are among the local bodies that reference GDHI data in economic and public health planning