Student digs that are fit for a king

There is a new breed of student in London and they're looking for accommodation just a little smarter than your average digs.

Rich offspring of Middle Eastern royals, Russian oligarchs, African heads of state and super-rich east Asian businesspeople flooding into Britain for the start of the university term are prepared to pay so much for flats in the swankiest parts of London - Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Kensington and Chelsea - that agents say they have replaced bankers as the most common tenants of the most expensive flats.

For most students, a place in a standard London hall of residence - about £170 (HK$2,150) a week, with six evening meals included - seems expensive. But Peter Wetherell, managing director of Wetherell estate agents on Mount Street in the heart of Mayfair, said there had been a "big upswing in silver-spoon foreign students" this summer, and 35 per cent of all his flats in the £750- to £1,000-a-week bracket are now rented by students.

"They're nearly all from the Middle East, India, the rest of Asia," he said. "They're coming here to study and they want be in a secure, luxury environment." Wetherell said students, or their parents, spending more than £2,000 a week - £104,000 a year - were not uncommon. "They want all the facilities: the equivalent of a luxury hotel suite."

Lucy Morton, a senior partner at WA Ellis in Knightsbridge, said students wanted to live "as close to where they're studying as possible ... Lots of them here are going to Imperial College".

That means great demand in South Kensington, where the average flat costs more than £1 million, the highest in Britain.