Home ownership at 30-year low and one in five people are now renting their homes privately as housing crisis continues to price out Brits from buying
A fresh survey from the Department for Communities and Local Government shows fewer people are living in social housing too
ONE in five people in England are now renting their homes as Britain's housing market continues to price people out.
And home ownership has also hit a 30-year low as fewer people can afford to buy outright.
Latest figures out today from the Department of Communities and Local Government show that the percentage of renters is up from 19 in the 2014/15 year to 19.9 per cent in 2015/16.
The number of people renting households has grown by around a million since 2010 to hit a high of 4.5 million.
Private renters were also shown to be paying around 35 per cent of their income on housing, compared to 18 per cent for people who owned their own home.
And home ownership was down slightly from 63.6 per cent last year, to 62.9 per cent this year, the
The last time ownership was that low was in 1985 when it was 62.4 per cent - before soaring to around 70 per cent in the early 2000s.
A spokesperson from the Department for Communities and Local Government said today that the small changes were "statistically insignificant" and used small sample sizes.
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But Labour said the Tories had presided over "seven years of failure on housing" and showed that the total number of home owners had dropped by around 200,000 since they took office.
Shadow Housing Minister John Healey said: "The number of people stuck in an insecure and increasingly expensive private rented sector has grown dramatically over the last seven years.
"Conservative ministers are out of ideas and have no long-term plan to fix the cost of the housing crisis."
The news come after a survey from Shelter today showed that four out of five families in Britain can't afford to buy new builds because they are too big and costly.
Developers are being allowed to erect too many estates for the well off as they offer the biggest profits, it said.
That has left millions of households priced out of being able to afford even the smallest 5% deposits on a mortgage.
Lashing out at the government’s planning failings, the charity accused the system of being “rigged to fail”.
Graeme Brown, interim chief executive at housing charity Shelter, said the continued decline in home ownership was "yet another symptom of our failed house-building system". A "bold new approach" would be needed from ministers to solve the crisis, he said.
And today a damning Lords inquiry said the cost of the nation's "dysfunctional" market and failed housing policy is a "crushing financial and emotional burden for many families".
A Government spokesman said that the Conservatives had "halted" a period of decline which began under Labour's watch in 2003.
"New house-building starts and the number of first-time buyers are now at the highest level for almost a decade," they said.
"But we know that there is more to do to fix this country's broken housing market and to make Britain a country that truly works for everyone.
"That's why we've set out a comprehensive package of reforms in our Housing White Paper to build more homes and more quickly.
"We're also backing new legislation to prevent more people from becoming homeless in the first place, improving rights for renters and driving rogue landlords out of the market."