Hundreds March Over Soaring Housing Costs

Hundreds of people have marched through London in a protest over soaring housing costs in the UK.

Protesters gathered at Shoreditch in east London and Elephant & Castle in the south of the city before marching to City Hall for a rally.

Campaigners who want the Government to take steps to create a fairer housing and rental market carried banners reading "we need rent control" and "stop playing Monopoly with homes".

Police said it was impossible to put a figure on how many marchers turned out, but Sky News Correspondent Ashish Joshi, who joined the group as they marched through rainy east London, put the number at about 1,000.

He said: "There are a number of groups, here - tenants' associations, trade unions, people involved in social housing and what they say is there are about 360,000 people waiting for a council home in London alone.

"They also say that an average salary in the capital would have to increase by about 16 times to try and afford a property in the capital.

"They say the housing crisis is spiralling out of control and what they want to do is bring the focus of the housing crisis to the politicians ahead of the next election."

A young Brazilian worker named Clara told Sky News: "This is a very expensive country because it's one of the richest countries in the world and people come here and suffer a lot because we can't afford to get support and pay rent.

"It's a big problem because the Government could do some laws to control rents and do more social housing, but they don't."

Another protester, Sarah from London, said: "We need to have political parties that are prepared to address the issue. We have to make it quite clear that London is for working people.

"It is a working class city and we need to have homes that working class people can afford."

The March for Homes was led by the Focus E15 group of mothers who occupied empty flats on an estate in Newham, east London, to highlight the issue of homes left empty for years.

It also involved pressure group New Era, named after an estate where residents last year forced a US investor to abandon plans to evict families and triple rents.

After the main rally, breakaway groups of protesters staged occupations of the One Tower Bridge housing development and the Aylesbury Estate, which is being turned into private, luxury flats by developers.

The protest came as Sky News spoke to voters in marginal general election seat Thurrock in Essex , where there are concerns about the housing crisis, but fears that none of the main political parties are willing to tackle the problem.

Click here for the Sky News In the Margins console .