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Soaring UK Petrol Cost Is Stretching Budgets More Outside London

Drivers in northeast England are feeling the biggest crunch, while Londoners are using less of their wages than rest of the country.

A customer uses a fuel pump at a gas station near Manchester, UK, on Saturday, June 11, 2022.

A customer uses a fuel pump at a gas station near Manchester, UK, on Saturday, June 11, 2022.

Photographer: Anthony Devlin/Bloomberg

As the cost of filling up a car in the UK sits at an all-time high, the resulting stretch on budgets across the country is uneven.

Drivers in the northeast of England, which spans major cities such as Newcastle, are using almost a fifth of their weekly wages to fill up a standard car with 55 liters of fuel. Residents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland use more than 15% of their income to pump petrol into their vehicles, according to Boiler Central data.