About WealthLens UK

Mission

WealthLens UK is an open-source project making UK wealth inequality data visible, interactive, and impossible to ignore. We believe public data should be publicly accessible — not buried in spreadsheets or hidden behind paywalls.

Data Sources

All data is sourced from official government and academic publications. Key datasets are cited below; the Data Sources page documents our data sources with their URLs and access dates.

• World Inequality Database (WID.world)

  Provides: Top 1% and top 10% wealth shares in Great Britain

  URL: https://wid.world/

  Accessed: 2026-05-14

• ONS — Housing Affordability

  Provides: House price to workplace-based earnings ratio by region (lower quartile and median)

  URL: ons.gov.uk — Housing affordability

  Accessed: 2026-05-14

• ONS — Wealth and Assets Survey

  Provides: Total net wealth by decile in Great Britain

  URL: ons.gov.uk — Total Wealth in Great Britain

  Accessed: 2026-05-14

• HMRC — Capital Gains Tax Statistics

  Provides: Capital gains concentration by size of gain

  URL: gov.uk — Capital Gains Tax Statistics

  Accessed: 2026-05-14

Methodology

Data is sourced directly from official government and academic publications. Raw datasets are downloaded and processed into clean CSV files via reproducible Python scripts. The backend API serves this processed data to the frontend, which renders interactive charts. Most charts present the published figures as-is; where a chart applies inflation adjustment (real terms), clearly-marked projections, or an illustrative composite while live data is unavailable, that is stated in the chart's own methodology section.

Limitations

• Data coverage varies between sources — some datasets cover Great Britain only, others England and Wales.
• Survey-based data (such as the Wealth and Assets Survey) is subject to sampling limitations and may understate extreme wealth.
• Wealth can be hidden, held offshore, or structured through trusts, meaning official figures likely underestimate true concentration.
• Time periods differ between datasets; not all sources update at the same frequency.
• This project presents data, not policy recommendations. Interpretation is left to the reader.

Open Source

WealthLens UK is fully open source. All code, data pipelines, and documentation are available on GitHub.

github.com/Chris0Jeky/wealthlens-hq

Contributions, corrections, and suggestions are welcome.