Expenditure on rent payments has increased by 17 per cent in the year to August, the Nationwide’s latest Spending Report reveals.

And it increased by 7 per cent between July and August alone.

The figures came after the NRLA had responded to research published by Shelter indicating that one in seven private tenants in England had their rent increased in the previous month.

‘With more than a million private tenants hit with a rent hike in just the last month, time is running out. To give cash-strapped renters a fighting chance, the Prime Minister must at a minimum urgently unfreeze housing benefit so people can afford to pay their rent or face an explosion in homelessness’ said Shelter chief executive Polly Neale.

NRLA agreed. ‘At a time when inflation is so high and landlord costs are rapidly increasing, the latest official data shows that average private rents across the UK have gone up by 3.4 per cent over the last twelve months’, said NRLA policy director Chris Norris.

‘This shows that most landlords are prepared to bear the brunt of rising costs to keep tenants in their homes when they can.

‘There will be cases where landlords are simply unable to shoulder all the increased costs and need to increase rents accordingly. Where this causes difficulties, particularly for tenants on low incomes, the Government should end the freeze on housing benefits. Even before the sharp rise in inflation, the level of benefits was failing to reflect the cost of rents as they are today.

‘Further increases in rents will also be driven by a chronic shortage of homes for private rent. This is a direct consequence of government action to discourage investment in the sector. Ministers need urgently to develop pro-growth policies to ensure supply meets demand in the rental market’.