Chancellor urged to unfreeze Local Housing Allowance as new analysis reveals women spend over half their income on rent

Women in the UK spend on average 58% of their earnings on private rent, compared to 42% for men. This 16% gender gap in housing affordability, revealed by the Women’s Budget Group’s analysis of the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), highlights the urgent need for the Chancellor to unfreeze Local Housing Allowance and for the Government to deliver on its promises to build social housing and ease the financial pressure on women across the country.

While private renting is unaffordable for both men and women in the UK – with both spending on average more than 30% of their income on rent – the burden falls disproportionately on women. Rising rents, combined with the gender pay gap, benefit freezes and cuts to social security over the past decade, have left women particularly vulnerable.

Ahead of the Autumn Budget, the Women’s Budget Group is calling on the Chancellor to permanently re-link Local Housing Allowance to actual local rents, ensuring housing support keeps pace with costs and helping to close the gender housing affordability gap.

Key findings

• Earnings are not keeping up with private rents. In the UK, women see on average 58% of their median earnings absorbed by rent, compared to 42% for men (across all properties).
• For a one-bedroom property this figure stood at 47% for women in the year to April 2025 and at 34% for men.
• This comes to a gender housing affordability gap of 13% for a one-bedroom flat in the UK.
• This is even higher for two-bedroom properties, where the gap stands at 15% (53% of women’s earnings v 38% of men’s earnings).
• The situation in London is especially acute, where a woman renting a two-bedroom property could expect to see 71% of her earnings absorbed by rent as of April 2025. For men renting in the capital, this figure is 59%.
• The average rental price of a one-bedroom property in the UK has gone up from £1,000 in April 2024 to £1,082 in April 2025, £82 per month or £984 per year. In London the average price of a one-bed has risen by £138 per month or £1,656 per year.

Women and housing benefit

• An Equality Impact Assessment carried out by the DWP in 2020 noted that, of housing support claimants who had a shortfall between their rent and housing benefit, 52% were single women (as opposed to 18% single men and 30% couples).
• While it is difficult to estimate the proportion of women receiving Housing Benefit as it is based on household characteristics,
  • 51% of Housing Benefit recipients are in single-female-headed households, and almost 12% are in couple households (many of which will include women).
  • Around 57% of tenants on Housing Benefits are women.

WBG calls on the Chancellor to

• Unfreeze and permanently re-link Local Housing Allowance rates to local rents, raising it to the 50th percentile to ensure housing benefit actually covers renting costs and protects women from falling into poverty and/or becoming homeless.
• Review overall benefit rates to make up for losses experienced by benefit claimants, and women in particular, over the past 14 years; and prevent the real value of benefits from being further eroded by the rising cost of living.
• Deliver on the government’s promise that 60% of its £39 billion social and affordable homes programme will be for social rent.

Erin Mansell, Interim Deputy Director of the Women’s Budget Group, said:

“The Chancellor has committed to putting the cost of living at the heart of her upcoming budget. To deliver on this promise, she must look at the biggest cost people face: 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.

“Because of that, they also rely more on social security, with women making up 57% of tenants on housing benefit. Benefit freezes over the past decade have been a major driver of women’s income loss, and cuts to social security and public services have disproportionately affected their living standards.

“The Renters’ Rights Act is a major step forward for private renters, offering greater security, but it does not address the crisis of affordability. Local Housing Allowance rates have fallen behind actual rents, and while the temporary realignment in the Autumn Budget of 2023 offered a brief reprieve, it is not enough. Women’s earnings are simply not keeping pace with rising housing costs, and without action, this will only get worse.

“To tackle this crisis, the government must permanently re-link Local Housing Allowance to at least the 30th percentile of local rents. This would give private renters real security and ensure housing support reflects the true cost of renting. Single mums already make up the majority of statutory homeless families. Without bold action, gender inequalities will deepen, leaving more women and children at risk of poverty and homelessness.”

Notes to editors:

• Source: WBG calculation based on mean private rent per year divided by median annual earnings. Data sources below. Figures correct as of April 2025 (latest available earnings data)
  • ONS Price Index of Private Rents, UK: monthly price statistics. Data for April 2025 from 22 October 2025 edition of the dataset. Available here. 
  • ONS, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025, Table 8.7a. Available here.
  • We measure private rental housing affordability by calculating the percentage of median annual earnings that would be absorbed by average (mean) annual rent. Note that anything over 30% is considered unaffordable.
• Housing benefit: Calculated from DWP Stat-Xplore Housing Benefit Table 4 Family Type by Gender – Data from April 2018, as of August 2025, counting female single claimants and 50% of people in couples claiming housing benefits.

ENDS

Contact Viktoria Szczypior at viktoria.szczypior@wbg.org.uk / press@wbg.org.uk

The UK Women’s Budget Group (WBG) is the UK’s leading feminist economics think tank, providing evidence and analysis on women’s economic position and proposing policy alternatives for a gender-equal economy. WBG acts as a link between academia, the women’s voluntary sector and progressive economic think tanks.