About 1.75 million people who rent their homes do not believe they will ever be able to buy a property, according to analysis of the English Housing Survey carried out by the Labour Party.

This is an increase of 585,000 since 2010 and may surprise Government ministers given the raft of measures they have brought in to encourage home purchases. It is up by almost 300,000 since 2012 when George Osborne, introduced the help-to-buy programme, which critics claim boosted demand.

Levels of owner-occupation have been declining since peaking at 71 per cent in 2003. Since then, population growth, a lack of new housing, the failure to replace social housing sold under the right-to-buy scheme and rising property prices have resulted in the figure dropping to 63 per cent.

The shadow housing secretary, John Healey said:

“The dream of buying a home is dying for more and more private renters. With home ownership at a 30-year low and a million fewer under-45s with their own home now than just eight years ago, it’s clear Tory ministers have no answers to the cost of the housing crisis.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently found that the chances of a young adult on a middle income owning a home in the UK have more than halved in the past two decades. It said an explosion in house prices above income growth had increasingly robbed the younger generation of the ability to buy their own home.