An Essex businessman who won government contracts paying his firm £3.5m a day for transporting and accommodating asylum seekers has been named among the 350 richest people in the UK. Graham King, the founder and majority owner of a business empire that includes Clearsprings Ready Homes, which won a 10-year Home Office contract for housing thousands of asylum seekers, was on Friday named alongside King Charles III, the prime minister and Sir Paul McCartney on the Sunday Times rich list of the wealthiest people. King, 56, is estimated to have amassed a £750m fortune from “holiday parks, inheritance and housing asylum seekers for the government”. Clearsprings Ready Homes made £62.5m in profits after tax for the year ending January 2023, more than double its profits of £28m the previous year. King, ranked 221st, is one of several new entries to the 2024 rich list alongside Formula One driver Sir Lewis Hamilton and Tony and Cherie Blair’s son Euan, whose apprenticeship firm Multiverse is said to be worth £1.4bn. The Hinduja brothers retained the title of the UK’s richest people with an estimated fortune of £37.2bn, up from £35bn last year – and the largest fortune ever recorded in the newspaper’s...