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They used to call it the brain drain to London - but record numbers of Londoners are moving to Wales.

Ever-more people are shunning the UK capital to live in Wales. A whopping 6,030 people left London to move to Wales last year - while 5,870 people moved from Wales to London.

It means London suffered a net loss of 160 people to Wales. It’s the first time more people have moved to Wales than the other way round in at least five years, according to new data from the Office for National Statistics.

In 2016, Wales suffered a loss of 350 more people moving to London than went the other way.

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But, that was still an improvement from the net loss of 920 people to London the year before.

In 2014, Wales suffered a net loss of 690 people, again an improvement from the 1,010 in 2013.

The gap was widest, though, in 2012. That year, 5,900 people moved from Wales to London as 4,870 moved from London to Wales, giving our country a loss of 1,030.

One possible explanation for the rapid change could be because house prices (as well as most living costs) in Wales remain substantially cheaper than in the capital. You can see house prices in Wales versus house prices in London here .

The average cost of a home in Wales is £153,000, some 68 per cent cheaper than the £484,586 it costs to buy a home in London. An entire Welsh village is for sale for the price of a London flat .

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Overall London is hemorrhaging more people than ever, suffering a net loss of 106,620 people to other parts of the UK in 2017.

Some 225,690 people moved to the capital while 332,310 left. That’s a huge increase from the net loss of 50,670 people some five years earlier in 2012.

Stephen Clarke, senior economic analyst for Resolution Foundation, a living standards think tank, said: “London is a net exporter of people to the rest of the UK. This is likely due to high housing costs with figures suggesting that people are leaving London when they have children and want to put down roots, a struggle given property prices in the capital.

“London needs to get a handle on its high housing costs if its ‘living standards exodus’ is to be stopped. To do this, the number of new homes built needs to match the capital’s housing needs. Furthermore, a significant proportion of new housing stock needs to be genuinely affordable – and that should apply to both homes to rent, and to buy.”