The Lancashire postcodes with the most and least affordable rents

Jon Macpherson & David Dubas-Fisher

5 May 2024 at 8:20 am·3-min read

Renting a home is becoming increasingly unaffordable in parts of Lancashire, as wages fail to keep up with increasing prices.

It costs £726 a month on average to rent a home in Ribble Valley in the year to March 2024, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. That’s up by nearly a quarter (24.7%) from £582 in 2015.

The average full-time worker in the area earned £30,589 after tax last year. That’s up just 2.8% from £29,743 in 2014. It means rents are increasing at almost nine times the rate of wages in Ribble Valley, the largest disparity in our region.

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The average rent in the area is now 28.5% of the typical take-home pay, up from 23.5% in 2015. Pendle has also seen rent prices increase far faster than wages.

The average rent in the area has increased from £437 a month in the year to March 2015, to £566 a month in March 2024. That’s an increase of 29.5%.

Take-home pay increased by just 5.9% in that time though to £22,000 a year. It means average rents now make up 30.9% of typical wages, up from 25.2% in 2015.

Meanwhile, the amount of take-home pay going on rent in Rossendale has increased from 28.2% to 31.7%.

You can see how rent affordability has changed over time in our region as well as in other parts of the country by using our interactive map:

Elsewhere, renting in some parts of Lancashire is becoming more affordable. Renting the average home in Preston cost £662 a month in the year to March 2024.

The average take-home pay is £26,590 a year. That means the average rent makes up 29.9% of the typical income, down from 34.1% in 2015.

In Blackpool, average rents make up 31.9% of the typical take-home pay, down from 35.8% in 2015. In West Lancashire the ratio has dropped from 32.4% to 28.4%, and in Burnley from 27.5% to 25.6%.

People in Great Britain spend more than half of their take-home pay on rent, as wages fail to keep up with soaring prices. It cost £1,246 a month on average to rent a home in Britain in the year to March 2024.

That’s up by 9.1% compared to the same time last year, and by 34.8% since March 2015, when the average home cost £924 a month to rent. Meanwhile, the average full-time employee earned an estimated £27,825 last year after tax and national insurance were deducted.

That’s up by 23.1% from 2014, when the average take-home pay was £22,597 for full-time workers. That’s almost 12 percentage points less than rents have increased by in that time. It means that renting the average British home now costs 53.7% of the typical take-home pay, up from 49.1% back in 2015.

The figures come from exclusive analysis of official earnings and rent price data by the Reach Data Unit. Take-home pay has been calculated by deducting income tax and national insurance from the median salary in each local authority, for each year from 2014 to 2023.

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