Modern day Robin Hood alive, well and living in... Nottingham. Obviously

The nation’s most generous citizens appear to be following in the footsteps of their most famous predecessor

Happy to help out: Nottingham retains its reputation for generosity

The merry men and women of Nottingham are the most generous in the country, according to research into the lending habits of residents in towns and cities up and down the country when it comes to helping out friends struggling for cash.

Handing over more than double the national average of £35, the citizens of the city support those around them to the tune of £82 a year.

Other generous givers in the UK include Norwich (also handing over £82), Birmingham (£46), London (£45) and Leeds (£45). The most frugal friends however, are just down the road in Sheffield where they lend a steely £11 a year.

Other places you might struggle if you come up short include Brighton (£22), Edinburgh (£19), and Newcastle (£24), according to data from mobile payments system Paym.

While people from Nottingham are the frontrunners for the amount they’re likely to lend, residents of Leeds are the leaders when it comes to frequency by helping out a friend 46 times a year, more than double the national average of 20 times.

Brighton is bottom of the bunch again though – only giving on average once a year.

The latest figures fly in the face of historical research from Justgiving which found the most generous places in the UK in terms of charitable giving were Bedford, Cambridge, Reading, Brentford and Woking when it came to the number of charitable givers.

The most generous donations by amount came from those from Sevenoaks in Kent the site decided.

In fact, more than 80 per cent of Britons are happy to lend money to friends or family, though only a third are confident they’d get it back, suggests TopCashback.co.uk.

One in five people who have lent cash to work colleagues feel too uncomfortable to ask for it back though.