LONDON’S super-rich are enjoying a spending bonanza the like of which the city has never seen, according to a new survey.


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Research from analysts Stonehage found that inflation for high-end goods such as expensive clothes, posh restaurant meals and top people’s property is running at 6.7%, a couple of percent higher than general inflation.

The price of works of art has shot up by 10.5% over the last year and fine wines by a whopping 27.6% rise.

“The large rise [in high-end prices] shows that confidence about prosperous times is growing, triggering a return to spending,” said a spokesperson for Stonehage.

Those price rises are caused by a surge in demand as the super-rich recover from the recession in super-fast style, leaving everyone else behind.

There are also more of the super-rich than ever before. Partly thanks to an influx of foreign wealth, London now has nearly 300,000 millionaires.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, new figures from homeless charity Broadway show that there has been an 8% rise in people sleeping on London’s streets over the past year, from 3,673 in 2009/10, to 3,975 in 2010/11.