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This week, it is all about the Budget. What will Rachel Reeves announce? What will she shy away from? Can she survive much longer in her job? If she can’t, who will succeed her? But, as exclusive new data from the Women’s Budget Group shared with me for this newsletter shows, all that drama and gossip rather misses the point.
Housing in Britain, arguably the largest and most essential cost faced by any normal person, is too expensive. Although prices have slowed their rise in recent years and, in some cases, even fallen, the increase in interest rates means that homeowners are often spending substantial amounts each month on mortgage repayments.
Renters fare no better. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), private rents increased by 5 per cent to £1360 between October 2024 and October 2025. This followed a peak of nearly 10 per cent in 2022/23.
This is a problem. New analysis of local rent and earnings data by the Women’s Budget Group reveals that in England, average rents are now 50 per cent of people’s take-home pay. Rent is considered affordable if it costs a third or less of what someone earns after tax.
So what’s coming up in today’s newsletter?
Why expensive housing is one of the biggest economic problems facing Britain? How Labour faces a late 1970s moment: low productivity, barely there growth, and economic pessimism. And will there/won’t there be a ‘mansion tax’? Plus, why I hate that term.Because women earn less than men on average, things are even worse for women – particularly single parents – who are trying to find somewhere they can afford to rent on one salary.
According to the Women’s Budget Group’s analysis, average rents in England now cost 60 per cent of the average woman’s salary. In Scotland, it’s 41 per cent, in Wales, it’s 36 per cent, and in Northern Ireland, it’s 37 per cent.
London, as you might expect, is by far the least affordable place in the country. In England’s capital, the average rent costs 68 per cent of the average salary. For women, it’s a whopping 75 per cent.
Outside of London, the most expensive places for a woman on her own to try and rent a home are Brighton and Hove (where the average rent consumes 51 per cent of an average woman’s salary), Oxford (which, as I’ve written, has a housing crisis almost as bad as London’s) and Tandridge in Surrey’s commuter belt.
Close behind those hotspots are Mole Valley (also in Surrey, 49 per cent), Sevenoaks (in Kent, 48 per cent), Watford (47 per cent), Bath and North East Somerset (47 per cent) and Bristol (46 per cent).
71 per cent of households impacted by the benefit cap are single parents, most of whom are womenUnaffordable rents are a danger for both renters and the Chancellor. Why? Because if housing costs consume a huge amount of people’s disposable income after tax, it means they have less to spend on other things. If you’re trying to make an economy more productive, this is the opposite of what you’d want to see.
I travel all over the UK reporting on the cost of living and the housing crisis. In the last few weeks alone, I’ve met people – most of them women – who cannot live their lives properly because of the cost of rent.
In Birmingham, I met a single mother of three who is homeless and living in temporary accommodation because she cannot afford private rent and childcare.
In Glasgow, I met a single mother of one who has moved to Scotland, away from her support network in Leeds, because it’s more affordable than the north of England. Still, she told me that she often can’t afford “proper meals” as well as her £800 a month rent.
In London, I spoke to a single mother in her early thirties who sleeps on a sofa bed so that her son can have a bed. She “barely goes out” because she can’t afford to.
Erin Mansell, Interim Deputy Director at the Women’s Budget Group, told me that women face a particularly difficult situation across the nation. In many cases, they’re caught between the cost of childcare and rent.
“Because women earn less than men, largely due to caring responsibilities, they have to spend a greater proportion of their incomes on housing, and are less able to increase their earnings to cover rising rents,” Mansell explained. “At the same time, a decade of benefit freezes, cuts, and punitive sanctions has hollowed out the value of our social security system.”
Mansell is not wrong. 71 per cent of households impacted by the benefit cap are single parents, most of whom are women. The two-child limit has also affected what parents can afford to do. Added to that, the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) has been frozen since the Conservatives increased it in 2024, but rents have risen since then, which means the state support available to help pay rent has fallen behind what rents actually cost.
Reeves is rumoured to be addressing some of this tomorrow. The two-child limit is expected to be scrapped, which will cost the state around £3bn a year to fund. Smoke signals have also been sent out from No. 11 when it comes to the LHA, too. Housing Benefit may also be boosted, and if it is, it would certainly help low-income renters, in particular women.
But, even if these rumours are proven true, it won’t actually address the problem. Like sticking a plaster on a broken leg, Britain’s runaway rental market will still be unaffordable. People will still be forced to choose between paying rent and having a life. They will still struggle to avoid homelessness on a month-to-month basis. That’s how high the stakes are out there.
Reeves needs growth. She also needs Britain to become a more productive place. And, crucially, she needs to balance curbing welfare spending with reducing child poverty and homelessness. It’s a tall order; few would envy her in the job.
But no amount of welfare spending will change the fundamentals: housing now costs too much in comparison to what most people earn.
That’s not an easy problem to solve. Indeed, increasing the amount of Housing Benefit available or the amount of money parents have in their pockets by lifting the two-child limit could actually make things worse. People need housing, so they will pay more than they can afford to secure it. That drives rents up.
That said, this is not an argument against boosting LHA or lifting the two-child limit. Reeves should do those things as a moral imperative, but at the same time, she should also address the problem of rent.
The Renters’ Rights Bill introduces extremely soft rent control via the implementation of a tribunal where renters can challenge above-market rent hikes. That is, of course, if they have the time, the inclination and the knowledge to do so.
Like the Labour governments of the post-war era, Reeves must reckon with a changing world.
What once worked in the 1980s and 90s – privatising national services, including housing – no longer works. Indeed, in many ways, we are still reckoning with the legacy of the Thatcher, Major and New Labour governments. Not least, what followed with austerity, Brexit and the Coronavirus pandemic.
Reeves must be bold and offer a new economic vision for Britain. In 1965, Harold Wilson’s government introduced the Fair Rent Act to ratify rent controls, which had initially been brought in during the First World War. This gave renters security and stability. But by the 1980s, it had also caused the rental market to stagnate.
Rent controls are not the solution this time. But something equivalent to a radical reset of our housing system is required. Fixing this mess is simpler than it sounds.
First, Reeves must get together with Housing Secretary Steve Reed and build social housing. The £39bn ten-year Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) is a good start, but it’s not enough. We urgently need to reduce the Housing Benefit and temporary accommodation bills (£20bn and £1.7bn per year, respectively) and reduce poverty and homelessness. Getting people into social housing would solve that issue. More than that, it would mean that they have rent stability, which would give them more money to spend elsewhere in the economy.
Housing crisis watch
I caught up with Simon Ricketts KC, a barrister who specialises in planning at Town Legal. He has a suggestion for the government.
Social and Affordable housebuilding is now mostly agreed and funded via Section 106 agreements. Developers complain that these are costly and time-consuming, so, Ricketts says, why not standardise them? Could speeding up planning really be that simple? Ricketts thinks so.
“The timing is perfect for this initiative – the Commons Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government has called for progress within six months, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) consulted in May on the principle of standardising section 106 agreements for smaller schemes,” he explains.
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“This should not in any way be politically controversial, and nor does it even need legislation! This is a change which in real terms could achieve large time and cost savings, yes for developers but also for local authorities. I’m struggling to see what’s not to like!” he adds.
And, finally, catch up on my analysis of why Rachel Reeves risks bungling property tax reform with her ‘mansion tax’ here.
What I’m reading
I thought this long read interview with the Chancellor by the FT’s political editor George Parker was fascinating. As a woman in the media with a small public profile, I agree with Rachel Reeves that there is misogyny in British public life. If you don’t believe me, read the letters that get sent to me via our offices here at The i Paper. I have an enormous amount of empathy for Reeves, and all women politicians across the political spectrum in this regard. This Guardian investigation into the Free Birth Society – an organisation which pushes so-called natural and non-medical births on women – by Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne was an important but harrowing read.Hence then, the article about women renters will be left behind again in the budget here s why was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
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