OFFICIAL figures have revealed that home ownership in England has fallen to its lowest level for 30 years, while the number of people privately renting is now higher than in the early 1960s.

Government data shows that the private rented sector has doubled in size since 2004, with almost half of all 25 to 34-year-olds in England renting from a private landlord.

Ministers recently admitted England’s housing market was “broken”, with home ownership a distant dream for millions.

Labour claimed the figures showed the Government was “out of ideas” and had no long-term plan to fix the housing crisis.

The Generation Rent campaign group said runaway house price inflation and difficulty in saving for a deposit had trapped millions in private rented housing, “even more [people] than in the days of slum landlords like Rachman”.

The latest English Housing Survey, produced by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), found that of the estimated 22.8m households in England, 14.3m – or 62.9 per cent – were owner-occupiers in 2015-16.

It stated that owner-occupation rates “remain unchanged for the third year in a row”.

This is down from a peak of 70.9 per cent in 2003 and is the lowest figure since 1985, when it was 62.4 per cent.

By contrast, the private rented sector has ballooned in size and now accounts for just over 4.5m households – double the 2.3m in 2004. The new figure represents 20 per cent of the total, whereas in 2002 it was 10 per cent.

Separate government data shows there were 4.377m private rented households in England in 1961.

The English Housing Survey said that while younger people had always been over-represented in the private rented sector, over the past decade the increase “has been particularly pronounced”.

In 2005-2006, 24 per cent of those aged 25-34 were privately renting. This figure has now leapt to 46 per cent. Over the same period, the percentage of those in this age group buying a home with a mortgage plummeted, from 53 per cent to 35 per cent .

The report also provided fresh evidence that, for those who can afford to buy, the traditional 25-year mortgage may be on the way out.

It found that almost all first-time buyers had taken out a repayment mortgage and 40 per cent had signed up for a home loan lasting 30 years or more. The average age of a first-time buyer is now 32, up from 31 in 2005-2006.

Responding to the figures, shadow housing secretary John Healey said: “After seven years of failure on housing, not only has home ownership fallen, but affordable housebuilding has hit a 24-year low, and rough sleeping has more than doubled.”

Dan Wilson Craw, director of Generation Rent, said: “The Government knows that the housing market is broken but it is failing to do enough to fix it. Ministers need to expand their ambitions to build homes, while reforming the law to provide stability for the millions who will be unable to buy in foreseeable future.”