Booming Brentwood is riding high in the UK's prosperity league, with high incomes and low unemployment, according to a new report, but this is creating new challenges for the town.

The Wealth of the Nation Report 2001, based on summer 2000 figures collated by market analysts CACI, puts the average national income at £23,200, but in the Brentwood area it tops £33,000.

This puts the borough 18th out of 485 local authority areas in the UK; the City of London is top, the Rhondda at the bottom.

But according to Brentwood Chamber of Commerce, although this is welcome news the situation does create its own problems.

The town has to be able to meet the demands of people from both ends of the economic spectrum, and businesses face difficulties recruiting staff because of generally high expectations and an extremely low 1.1 per cent unemployment rate.

Chamber chairman, Dorothy Denton, said: "This news does not surprise me, but it does create problems of its own.

"A town like Brentwood has to work towards providing what people on high incomes need and we also have to be able to supply services for what we would call the 'core customer'. It is a fine balancing act.

"Recruitment has been a major issue in Brentwood for some time. If you look at the Christmas period everyone was advertising for staff but said they could not get anyone."

The Brentwood borough's mean annual income of £33,200 represents a 15.8 per cent rise since 1999, bettered by only a handful of areas, and a 26 per cent rise since 1996.

Ranked by postcode area Brentwood and Chelmsford's CM code has the equal 19th highest average income at £29,200, the highest being West London's W code at £34,200.

By county, Essex ranks eighth out of 67, with an average of £26,100. Surrey tops the list at £33,400.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.