The average cost of private rented accommodation is available, but only at a regional level. The Department’s data source, the Survey of English Housing, does not have a large enough annual sample to generate reliable private rental estimates at local authority level.
The recent trend in average rents for the Government office region of the south-west and for the whole of England is as follows:
£ per month South West England 1999-2000 to 2000-01 364 421 2000-01 to 2001-02 396 460 2001-02 to 2002-03 413 502 2002-03 to 2003-04 419 518 2003-04 to 2004-05 446 517 2004-05 to 2005-06 469 534 2005-06 to 2006-07 495 556 1 Before deduction of housing benefit where applicable 2 Assured shorthold tenancies accessible to the public without special conditions Note: Sampling variability is too great to provide reliable regional estimates for individual years Source: Survey of English Housing