Around one in five UK tenants (19%) - the equivalent of 1m people – are spending over half of their take-home salary on rent. With one in ten (11%) spending over 60% of their payslip on rental costs.

That’s according to tenant and landlord services provider Canopy, which has released its latest rental affordability index. The index analyses data from over 60,000 individual renters, measuring average take-home salary of employed tenants against their share of rental costs, to create a rent to income ratio (put simply, what percentage of their salary is spent on spent on rent).

Typically, spending 40% of take-home salary is considered the very upper limit of affordability. The latest Canopy reports shows that the average renter is actually spending 36% of net take-home salary on rental payments, yet in several areas of the country, including every single London borough bar one, tenants are spending in excess of 40%

Staggeringly, one in 25 tenants (4%) spends over 80% of their take-home salary on paying the rent. Tenants in London (44.5%), the South-East (44.1%) and the South-West (41.3%) are paying the highest share of their salary on rent versus the national average.

Those in the North-East pay the lowest rents in the country, at just £573 per month. This equates to 33.7% of the average take-home salary, which is around 2% less than the national average.

In London, tenants pay an average of £1,183 on their personal share of the rent, typically equating to almost half (44.5%) of the average take-home payslip. This is around 11% more than in Northern Ireland, and around 8% more than the national average.