Rising rent costs in Sheffield are outpacing wage increases

Housing charity Shelter said private rents have risen to “grossly unaffordable” levels across the country, with the coronavirus pandemic only fuelling the issue.

In Sheffield, the median rental cost of a two-bedroom home was £595 a month in 2019-20, according to the latest data from the Valuation Office Agency.

That was 20% higher than during 2010-11 – the earliest year with comparable data – when it cost £495 per month to rent the same size property.

But separate earnings figures from the Office for National Statistics show the median salary of a full-time worker increased by just 17% between 2011 and 2020.

The median is a measure used to exclude extreme values which could skew the average.

It reflected the picture across England, where the average cost of a two-bed rose by 27%, compared to a 20% rise in wages.

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said hundreds of thousands of renters are now “struggling to make ends meet” amid the economic fallout of the pandemic.

Home building hit by pandemic

She said: “Private renting is already grossly unaffordable. Rents have outpaced wages for years and now the pandemic is turbo-charging the problem.

“Many have had to turn to benefits for the first time, only to find the support available doesn’t come close to covering most rents.”

She added that decades of failure to build new social homes means millions are trapped in the private renting cycle, with rising demand causing a spike in costs.

“Private renters spend more of their income on housing costs than anyone else,” she said.

ONS figures show that in Sheffield, the average full-time worker earned a median salary of £2,364 a month before tax in 2020.

It means if they lived alone, they would have to fork out 23% of their wages on renting a one-bed home in the area.

Meanwhile, two full-time workers would pay 13% of their gross monthly income to rent a two-bedroom property.

Earlier this month, the Government announced it would extend its ban on enforced evictions to protect vulnerable renters who are struggling in the pandemic.

It means bailiffs cannot carry out repossessions until early March at the earliest, unless in extreme circumstances.

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