LONDON GOES TO POT IN NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE

The north and south are not only divided over housing and employment - but
over cannabis use too, according to Whitehall research.

Almost 40% of 16 to 19-year-olds in London are estimated to have smoked
cannabis, against only 16% in Wales and 15% in Scotland, as the
Metropolitan police shows greater tolerance to the use of the soft drug.

Deep divisions between the prosperous south and the rest of England show
little sign of narrowing after four years of a Labour government, according
to the annual Regional Trends Survey.

On almost every indicator, from high unemployment to low incomes, bad
health and poor school exam results, the north lags well behind. But people
in London suffer a deteriorating quality of life with the country's highest
recorded crime and increasing traffic congestion. The report also
underlines divisions in London with unemployment, at 7%, the third highest
in Britain while incomes are still the highest.

Britain lags in the European prosperity league, with only London, the
south-east and eastern England wealthier than the European average.

With population rising by 1.7m to almost 60m, the report indicates that
demand for new housing in London and the south - the main pressure points
due to shortage of land - is not being met. While 92,000 people annually
are leaving the capital, 197,000 are coming in.

Yet house building is falling, with 13,000 fewer private houses completed
in Britain last year than in 1991. In London and the south-east, social
housing for renting to lower and middle-income workers is drying up. In
1990-91, 1,700 council houses were built in the capital and 3,400 in the
south-east. Last year none were built.

In the north, the supply of houses outstrips demand, with hundreds of
thousands of empty properties. Almost a third of high-earning financial
services jobs are located in London, compared with one in 10 in the north-east.

Over the period 1997-2000, average gross weekly income for households in
London was more than 1 and a half times that of the north-east. In the
south-east, the increase in house prices last year was almost 19% compared
with 3% and 4% in the north-east and north-west respectively.

While sickness leave is the lowest in the north-east, the wider north of
England and Scotland is beset by poor health. In Scotland, 490 deaths per
100,000 were caused by heart and circulatory diseases in 1999 compared with
360 per 100,000 in eastern England, London, the south-east and the south-west.

Regional Trends, 2001 edition, Office for National Statistics, Stationery
Office, UKP39.50