THE family owners of a leading York business have seen their wealth increasing by more than £400million over the past year, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

The latest list to be published in the print edition of the paper on Sundays says the Shepherd Family are worth £1.104bn, an increase of £411million on last year.

The family are known for their ownership of York-based modular buildings company Portakabin.

Their growing wealth places them 4th in Yorkshire and 156th nationally, compared with 245th last year.

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However, Yorkshire’s richest family is Hull-born Malcolm Healey and family.

The owners of Wren Kitchens are worth £1.501billion, but it represents a drop of £99million on last year. Nationally, however, they increased from 114th to 111th.

Malcolm Healey, 79, owns the 12,000-acre Warter Priory Estate, 3 miles east of Pocklington.

Supermarket heirs - Andrea Shelley, William Morrison and Eleanor Kernighan - retain their position as the fifth richest family in Yorkshire with their fortune of £933 million.

The children of Sir Ken Morrison did considerably well from the private equity takeover of the Bradford-based Morrisons supermarket chain this year.  

The collective wealth of Duty Free Shoppers Group co-founder, Robert Miller, and his daughter Princess Marie-Chantal, amounted to £1.429 billion this year, putting them in second place for Yorkshire.

However the duo’s wealth fell by £154 million this year - the largest drop in their region for two years running. The duty free shopping tycoon’s daughter is married to the new head of the Greek Royal Family.   

York Press: The Yorkshire Top 5

US-born Robert Miller, 90, is listed for Yorkshire due to his ownership of the Gunnerside Estate in Swaledale, near Richmond.

DFS founder, Lord Kirkham, and his family are listed as third richest in Yorkshire with their collective wealth of £1.14 billion.

Poor O-level results forced Kirkham to ditch his dream of making it in the RAF, and learn to make furniture - the beginning of DFS. Doncaster-born, he grew up in South Yorkshire. 

New entries on the Sunday Times Rich List include Jon and Susie Seaton. The married couple started Twinkl, an educational publisher, in Sheffield.

They have sold a stake that values the teaching aides business at £500 million 

The 76-page special edition of The Sunday Times Magazine reveals the largest fall in the billionaire count in the guide’s 36-year history, from a peak of 177 in 2022 to 165 this year.

This year’s list of 350 individuals and families together hold combined wealth of £795.361 billion — a sum larger than the annual GDP of Poland.

Sir Elton John, Lord Lloyd-Webber and David and Victoria Beckham all appear in the annual survey. The minimum entry for the list of 350 this year is £350 million. 

Robert Watts, compiler of the Sunday Times Rich List, said: “This year’s Sunday Times Rich List suggests Britain’s billionaire boom has come to an end. Many of our home-grown entrepreneurs have seen their fortunes fall and some of the global super rich who came here are moving away.

 “Thousands of British livelihoods rely on the super-rich to some extent. We’ll have to wait and see whether we have now reached peak billionaire, and what that means for our economy. 

 “These may be harder times to create wealth, but The Sunday Times Rich List continues to unearth entrepreneurs building fortunes in diverse and often surprising ways. This year’s new entries include people who have made money from artificial intelligence and virtual worlds as well as plumbing supplies and teaching aides.  

 “We know many of our readers find such people — especially those from humbler backgrounds — very inspiring.” 

To look at the list, go to: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/sunday-times-rich-list