Region has too many homes with spare room

Five of the region's local authorities have almost double the national average of under-used properties, with nearly 20 per cent of council homes having one or more empty rooms.

Doncaster had the worst rate in the country, with 21 per cent of council homes being classed as under-occupied, followed by North Lincolnshire (20 per cent), and Bradford, Calderdale and Leeds, all at 19 per cent.

The findings, compiled from more than 498,000 tenants listed on the national home exchange website Homeswapper.co.uk, come as the council house waiting list approaches the two million mark.

It means that thousands of council tenants are living in the wrong-sized property for their needs and suffering unnecessarily on council house waiting lists, while there are an estimated 500,000 empty bedrooms across the UK.

The imbalance is placing increasing strain on landlords and contributing to expanding social housing waiting lists, Homeswapper said.

Richard Blundell, Homeswapper's head of communications, said: "Under-occupancy is a challenge and an opportunity within social housing. On Homeswapper.co.uk there are 177,218 under-occupied homes with tenants who actively want to move and downsize."

There are 1.8m households on council housing waiting lists and 2.3m people living in properties officially classed as overcrowded in England, a figure expected to rise by 15 per cent to 2.6m within two years.

In the private housing sector, UK property asking prices fell for the second month in a row as the market was hit by over-supply and subdued activity in the summer holidays.

Research by property website Rightmove found sellers slashed prices by 1.7 per cent during the month to August 7, sending the average asking value down by 4,091 to 232,241.