That was £94 billion down on the previous year, a decrease of 1.4%.
The figures show that 2009 was the second year running that the net worth of the UK fell, though the decline was smaller than the drop of 4.3%, or £303 billion, in 2008. Prior to 2008 the net worth of the UK had been growing continuously for a number of years, the last time it declined being in 1992.
Households and non-profit institutions remained the sector with the highest net worth at end-2009 – in fact, at £7,244 billion it was actually bigger than the overall worth of the country.
This was possible as several other sectors had negative net worth, the largest of these negative valuations being for central government at -£395 billion.
Housing most valuable asset
Housing remained the most valuable asset at £4,048 billion, or 61% of the total net worth.
This was up £126 billion, or 3.2%, on the end 2008 value, although still below the £4,314 billion that the nation’s housing stock was worth at the end of 2007.
The value of housing stock belonging to households and non-profit organisations was £3,827 billion, about 57% of the nation’s wealth.
The next most valuable category of tangible asset was civil engineering works at £725 billion, or 10.9% of the total, followed by commercial, industrial and other buildings at £559 billion, or 8.4% of total net worth.
Total UK depreciation (capital consumption) of all assets in 2009 was £157 billion, with depreciation of plant and machinery accounting for almost 32% of this figure. This was an increase of £7.9 billion on the 2008 depreciation figure, which was the first year since records began where depreciation fell.
Over the past year, the value of total assets in use (net capital stock) has increased by 3.9%, indicating that investment remains greater than depreciation.
