FOI reference: FOI-2025-2726
You asked
I would like to submit a Freedom of Information request for the number of people in Great Britain who are privately renting.
I have the following questions:
- How many households in Great Britain were privately renting in 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019 and 2024?
- Which regions of Great Britain had the highest proportion of households privately renting?
- What was the average cost of rent in 2004, 2014 and 2024 in real terms?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry about private renters in Great Britain.
Housing is a devolved policy area, so each UK country is able to tailor their statistical collection to their local needs. This means there is not always one cohesive source with all the information regarding private renters. There are also differences between the availability and coherence of data based on whether you are looking for estimates of the number of households or dwellings. For more information about the comparability, coherence and data limitations in 2019 we published an article about the UK private rented sector.
Households in Great Britain privately renting in 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019 and 2024:
The information you have requested is available from the Annual Population Survey data, which collects tenure across the UK. Bespoke outputs can be ordered from our Social Surveys Customer Service team. Such services are subject to legal frameworks, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact socialsurveys@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, charges may apply for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.
The Department for Work and Pensions collect and publish data on household tenure as part of the Family Resources Survey (FRS). UK-level FRS data is available from FYE 2003 to FYE 2024 on the Stat-Xplore online tool. You can use Stat-Xplore to create your own FRS analysis.
A published source of estimates of the number of private-rented household for England is our release Subnational estimates of dwellings and households by tenure, England: 2021, which has data for both households and dwellings, however this is limited to England for the years 2012 to 2021. This data estimates there were:
- 2014: 3,980,707 private rented households in England
- 2019: 4,137,767 private rented households in England
Alternatively you can get publicly available data for Great Britain, but for estimates of the number of private rented dwellings instead of households, using our Dwelling stock by tenure, UK publication. The data is currently only published up to 2022. This data estimates there were:
- 2004 – 2,894,000 privately rented dwellings in Great Britain
- 2009 – 4,147,000 privately rented dwellings in Great Britain
- 2014 – 5,219,000 privately rented dwellings in Great Britain
- 2019 – 5,363,000 privately rented dwellings in Great Britain
- 2024 – Not available yet
Regions of Great Britain with the highest proportion of households privately renting:
The information you have requested is available from the Annual Population Survey data, which collects tenure across the UK including at regional level. Bespoke outputs can be ordered from our Social Surveys Customer Service team. Such services are subject to legal frameworks, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact socialsurveys@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, charges may apply for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.
A published alternative is the English Housing Survey which has a full regional breakdown for England, but not Great Britain. According to Chapter 1 and Annex data table 1.1 in the most recent release (2023-24), England as a whole had the following values:
- 2004 – 2,283,000 private rented households in England
- 2008-09 – 3,067,000 private rented households in England
- 2013-14 – 4,377,000 private rented households in England
- 2018-19 – 4,552,000 private rented households in England
- 2023-24 – 4,657,000 private rented households in England
Annex data table 1.2 suggests that London has the highest proportion of private rental households when compared to other English regions, it also had the highest number. This data estimates that:
- 2003-04 – 13.6% of households in London were private renters (405,000)
- 2008-09 – 21.5% of households in London were private renters (666,000)
- 2013-14 – 29.6% of households in London were private renters (1,014,000)
- 2018-19 – 27.4% of households in London were private renters (964,000)
- 2023-24 – 31.8% of households in London were private renters (1,193,000)
Average cost of rent in 2004, 2014 and 2024 in real terms:
Our rent price data is not produced in real terms, it is produced as the cost at the time of collection. Therefore, we do not hold this exact information. However, there are a number of different deflators you could use to create a real term series, some of these are described in Deflators and how we use them in economic statistics.
The Price Index of Private Rent, UK release (including table 3 of the historical series dataset) currently has the average rent for Great Britain from January 2011 to February 2025 and for England from January 2005. However there was a methodology step change in 2015 and we advise caution when comparing pre-2015 prices with data from 2015 onwards because of this. The data estimates that the average rent price was:
- Jan 2005 (England) - £775 per month in nominal terms
- Dec 2014 (Great Britain) - £917 per month in nominal terms
- Dec 2024 (Great Britain) - £1,327 per month in nominal terms