There are now more tenants than at any point since the millennium; one in five of us in England and Wales is now a member of “generation rent”. The sector has never been more relevant, but its problems have also never been more obvious.
Renters are handing over increasingly unsustainable portions of their pay in order to live in insecure tenancies, often in dangerous properties.
The government’s promised rental reform bill – included in last week’s king’s speech – aims to tackle some of these issues. Despite this, action on many problems, including no-fault evictions, may still take years to materialise.
The following charts explain the increasing pressures that renters have faced over the past few years.
Renting is increasingly unaffordable
Being a tenant has become much less affordable in recent years. A Guardian analysis of figures provided by property data company TwentiCi showed that the average asking rent across the UK this month was up 22% on October last year – and has risen 56% since October 2019.
Wages are struggling to keep up. Current asking rents in more than 40 council areas are considered unaffordable, meaning they eat up more than 30% of the average couple’s income. These sky-high rents aren’t limited to London: Cardiff, Manchester, Newcastle, Exeter, Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton and Hove were all among the UK cities breaching affordability.
More of us are renting because buying is out of reach
In 2001, barely one in 10 of us rented privately – now more than a fifth do. But how did we get here? Well, a lack of housebuilding means that buying a property – any property – in the UK is increasingly the preserve of the rich.
The only alternatives for many are living with family (which separate figures show is increasingly happening) and renting.
The UK is one of the most prohibitively expensive places to rent
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, almost one in four (23%) of all those who rent privately in the UK have to spend 40% or more of their salary, meaning they are overburdened by housing costs. That is a higher proportion of renters than any other country in Europe for which figures are available.
For the poorest, things are even tougher. More than half of the lowest earners in the UK who rent privately are overburdened; only Colombia scores higher in the data.
Current laws mean a lack of security while renting
One of the most pernicious aspects of England’s rental system for tenants is the dreaded section 21. This clause of the Housing Act 1988 allows landlords to issue notices to tenants evicting them without any reason.
Abolishing the right to section 21 is a core element of the government’s proposed renters reform bill – but has since been delayed until after lengthy court reforms. It has long been a Conservative policy – first proposed by Theresa May back in April 2019. Since that announcement, 76,725 claims have gone through the courts to evict people, and more than 71,130 households have been threatened with homelessness as a result of section 21, while many more tenants were evicted before their cases reached court.
The conditions of many rentals are poor
In addition to prohibitive rents and risk of eviction, data from the English Housing Survey shows how poor the standards are in the country’s private sector.
“Non-decent homes” are those that are not in a reasonable state of repair, pose a hazard of immediate threat to a person’s health, or cannot be effectively heated or insulated.
Just under a quarter (23%) of rentals in England did not meet the decent home standard in 2021-22. That compares with just 13% of owner-occupied housing and 10% of social housing.
Privately rented properties are also more than six times as likely to be affected by damp as owner-occupied houses, the figures suggest.
