Private rental prices paid by tenants in the UK rose by 2% in the 12 months to January 2022, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

This was a rise from 1.8% in the 12 months to December 2021, and is the fastest rate of increase for five years.

UK rental prices have now increased 12.3% since January 2015.

In England rents were up 2%, 1.4% in Wales and 2.6% in Scotland in the last year.

The East Midlands saw the highest annual growth in private rental prices (3.6%), while London saw the lowest (0.1%).

Sarah Coles, senior personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Rents are rising faster than any time for the past five years, forcing tenants to choose between squeezing their spending even harder, or uprooting their life. Either way, they’ll end up worse off.

“The official figures show rents are up 2%, and 3% outside London. However, they measure the rents people are currently paying, including everyone who has been in a rental property for the best part of a year, and newly advertised rents are rising far faster. Zoopla shows new rents are up 8.3%.

“It looks like rises are set to go further too. RICS research found that a slide in the number of properties for rent and another rise in tenant numbers is filling agents with confidence that rental prices will be on the march for months or even years. It expects rent rises to average 5% over the next five years.”

Renters have less resilience

The HL Savings and Resilience Barometer produced in partnership with Oxford Economics shows that renters have already faced horrible blows to their finances over the past year, and are much less resilient than their homeowning counterparts.

Coles said: “Renters are far less likely to have money left at the end of the month, so a rent hike will hit them hard. They’re also less likely to have emergency savings to fall back on, so they can’t dip into savings to cover their costs or to fund a move.”