South London boroughs rank among the highest in the capital for displaying huge disparities in wealth between its poorest and richest.

These findings were presented to the General London Assembly in a meeting at City Hall last Wednesday based on work by London Poverty Profile, a report compiled by New Policy Institute and funded by Trust for London.

The report detailed a shift in poverty from inner to outer London boroughs over the last decade, and investigated individual boroughs on the areas of inequality, homelessness, housing, unemployment, low pay, benefits and education.

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Outer London boroughs in the south were found to be above the London average for most of these indicators, but performed badly in terms of inequality.

Bromley, Bexley and Richmond are among the worst five London boroughs, alongside Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, for 'benefit polarisation.'

This refers to a situation in which a high proportion of the benefit claimants in each borough reside in small, concentrated areas.

The report shows inequality in Richmond to be particularly stark.

The report says councils can place homeless households in temporary accommodation while suitable settled accommodation is identified.

At the start of last year the number of London households living in temporary accommodation was three times higher than the rest of England, at 48,000 and 16,000 respectively.

The report says Merton, Waltham Forest and Lambeth, far from the most expensive boroughs, are the only other boroughs with more than half of their temporary accommodation households placed outside of the borough.

As well as high benefit polarisation, Richmond is among the worst eight London boroughs for GCSE attainment by pupils who get free school meals – despite above-average GCSE results across the borough as a whole.

Croydon was the only outer south London borough found to score below the London-wide for levels of poverty, when all the indicators were taken into account.

In inner London, Lewisham was also found to score below the average for London as a whole, with some of the capital's highest rates of out-of-work benefit claimants and worst educational statistics.

Hannah Aldridge, a senior researcher from New Policy Institute, said that while levels of poverty across London as a whole have not changed very much over the last ten years, the nature of poverty has changed significantly.

Ms Aldridge said: “The number of people living in poverty hasn’t really changed; it has sort of moved in line with population growth. But the type of people in poverty is very different.

“The traditional view of poverty in London is sink estate, inner London, workless families. That’s not the case anymore. The typical person in poverty is in a working family, in a private rented sector and in outer London. And poverty overall has just become much more diffuse; it’s not as concentrated in small areas anymore.”

Read the full report here