The “eye-popping” increases mean people in Kirklees are spending a third of their wages on rent

Almost a third of the average income in Kirklees is spent on rent, new figures show.

According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, the average rent in Kirklees is £683 per month in May. Meanwhile, other statistics show that the average salary for the same month in the same area is £2,206, meaning rent is 31% of the average person’s average monthly income.

This figure is for individual wages, so people living together will be able to split the rent between their wages.

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In Yorkshire and The Humber, the average rent was £789 and represented 36% of a person’s average wage, which stood at £2,219.

London saw rent take up the largest proportion of wages. The average rent in the city is £2,806, or 74% of the average income.

The North East recorded the lowest proportion, with the average rent of £667 covering 30% of the average wage.

Meanwhile, campaign group Generation Rent said the next government must tackle rental costs. They said the government needed to build more homes and prevent landlords from raising rents above wage growth or inflation.

Ben Twomey, chief executive of Generation Rent, said: “Shop prices may have stopped rising so quickly, but tenants are still seeing our biggest cost rise faster than our income.

“Landlords can raise the rent as high as they think they can get away with and use the threat of a no-fault eviction to bully their tenants into accepting it.”

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He added: “We will not fix the cost of the rental crisis unless the next government acts to curb these runaway rents.”

Additionally, he said more homes are needed along with protections for unaffordable rent increases.

Rents in Kirklees have risen by 8% from £633 a year ago, and are up 36% since records began in 2015, when the average rent was £501. In England, rent has risen by 9% since last year and by 35% since 2015.

Polly Neate, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, said: “Successive governments have failed to build the social rented homes we desperately need and private rents continue to rise as a result.

“Every day we hear from people who are being forced to shell out money they just don’t have to just to keep an overpriced and often crappy rental.”

She added that tenants are being left to accept “shocking rent increases” due to competitive rental markets and a lack of protection against evictions. She said the next government must urgently ban “no-fault” Section 21 evictions, cap rent increases and extend notice periods.

“But in the long term, the only way to turn the heat on private renting is to invest in a new generation of truly affordable social homes with rents linked to local incomes,” she added.