The cost of renting in Kent is rocketing, with one district seeing rises of more than a third over the past five years - sparking warnings people are being “priced out of their areas”.

But what is the solution? Some say a developers’ building blitz to boost supply is needed, while others argue for a post-war style council housing boom. Local Democracy Reporter Daniel Esson reports…

In recent years Folkestone has gained attention as a destination for ‘DFLs’ - or people ‘down from London’.

Coastal towns with good transport links are an increasingly attractive prospect for people leaving the capital, where housing costs have long been eye-watering.

But such is Folkestone’s popularity, as demand has increased, so has the cost of renting in the district. Up 36% since 2019, this is a bigger rise than anywhere else in Kent and means people are now paying £989 a month on average.

The second biggest spike (30%) has been in Thanet, home to trendy Margate, according to recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

One charity has warned people are being “priced out of their areas entirely”, with 60,000 renters across the country leaving their homes following hikes they could not afford.

Cllr Rebecca Shoob (Green), cabinet member for housing at Folkestone & Hythe District Council (FHDC), said: “Obviously recently Folkestone, in particular, is getting a lot of media attention, and it certainly is a nice place to live, so that certainly could be a factor affecting some of the properties across the district.”

The town’s star was already on the rise with its regenerated harbour arm before it was named as the best place to live in the south east by The Sunday Times earlier this year.

She argues that local authorities need extra funding from the national government to build more council homes to stem the rise of private rental costs.

“I really think we need to increase our council housing stock - they’re a real key factor, so everyone has access to a safe and secure home,” Cllr Shoob said.

“Increasing the number of homes available is absolutely essential.”

The ONS figures show that across Kent average monthly rent bills have gone up by £228, or 24%, since 2019.

The county’s rural west and the areas bordering London still command the highest payments.

Leafy Sevenoaks, right next to the outer reaches of the capital, has the priciest average rent in the county at more than £1,600, but it has not increased as much as elsewhere.

Dover has had Kent’s lowest average rent since 2019 - currently £859 per month - but even that has risen by almost a quarter in the past five years.

KentOnline previously revealed how the number of homes available to rent in the county for less than £1,000 a month had almost halved in the space of a year.

One mum who had lived in Faversham for 20 years told how she had no choice but to leave the town as she could not get a place “for love nor money”.

Now, the average monthly rent in almost every district is more than £1,000 - with the only exceptions being Folkestone, Thanet and Dover.

Cllr Helen Whitehead (Lab) deputy leader and cabinet member for housing at Thanet District Council (TDC) said: “The increase in the price of rents in Thanet has been a significant issue for many years now.

“As a new administration, we have been taking proactive measures to tackle it, through increasing our production and acquisition of council housing with nearly 400 council homes in the pipeline in less than 18 months, and through the development of in-house temporary housing.

“I have always been a strong advocate for council housing development and provision, and we are doing everything that we can to ensure that we are producing and acquiring genuinely affordable housing. There is a huge need for genuinely affordable housing.”

The new Labour government elected in July promised to “get Britain building again” and is currently working on a new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

As part of the changes, local councils are likely to have their annual housing targets increased - and be penalised for not hitting them.

Under the draft new housing targets, FHDC needs to build more than 100 extra homes per year, but Cllr Shoob argues that more building “on its own is not going to solve the crisis”.

“It has to be the right home in the right place at the right price,” she said.

“If we carry on the way we’ve been in the past it’s simply not enough to build our way out of the crisis. There's a whole raft of issues that need to be addressed.”

Some in the world of housing policy strongly disagree.

PricedOut, which bills itself as the “campaign for affordable house prices”, argues that more building is precisely what is needed.

“Changes in rent in the short-term can be influenced by a lot of factors,” said director Freddie Poser.

“We know, however, in the long-run, rent has sky-rocketed across the south east primarily because of a lack of new housing supply.

“When people want to live in growing regions like London and Kent, they have to compete for limited housing space because we’ve simply failed to build enough homes.

“If we don’t get a grip on the situation and start to deliver more houses in the places that people most want to live, this trend will continue and rents will remain unaffordable.”

Emma McCrudden, a manager at Catching Lives, a charity which helps the homeless and those at risk of homelessness in east Kent, said: "Rising rents in the local area mean many people we work with are facing additional financial barriers to securing or sustaining a home.

“An average one-bedroom flat costs more per month than the local housing allowance, meaning many of our clients are not able to pay the top-up costs, particularly in a cost-of-living crisis.”

Ms McCrudden says eligibility for benefits can also “present challenges”, noting that many homeless people are not eligible for social housing either.

"The reasons that people lose their homes has as much to do with the lack of support services and barriers to seeking support,” she added.

Some charities argue that more affordable housing, and protection for renters, are the way forward.

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: "There is a severe shortage of genuinely affordable social homes across the country and local communities are paying the price.

“In many towns and cities, people’s only choice is to fork out for often shoddy and expensive private rentals or be priced out of their areas entirely.

"With private rents rocketing, tenants often feel they have no choice but to cough up huge sums just to keep a roof over their heads.

“In the past year alone, 60,000 renters have been forced out of their homes by a rent hike they couldn’t afford.

"To ensure renters have real stability, the Renters’ Rights Bill, currently making its way through Parliament, should limit in-tenancy rent increases by tying them to either inflation or wage growth.”

The new legislation, introduced by Labour, is set to include many reforms to the rights of tenants - the most touted of which is the abolition of no-fault evictions.

“But long-term, the government must release funding to councils to build a new generation of genuinely affordable social homes that will finally take the pressure off private renting,” Ms Neate added.

The Labour government aims to have an extra 1.5 million homes built by the end of the parliament in 2029.

300,000 new homes a year was the target of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government elected in 2019 as well.

However, no government in Britain has built 300,000 a year since the 1960s.

Councils directly building their own housing is now almost unheard of, and has been in steady decline since the 1970s.

In the period immediately after the Second World War, council housebuilding was the majority of all development in the country, but this gradually shifted to the private sector.

Read more of our Spotlight on Housing features here

By the 1970s, public finances were squeezed by economic crises, and the overall rate of housebuilding slowly declined, as did the proportion of those built by councils.

When Margaret Thatcher led the Conservatives to victory in the 1979 general election, her new government moved to cut public expenditure on housing, and thus to leave building increasingly to private firms.

The ‘Right to Buy’ for council tenants, and the transfer of council housing into the control of housing associations, both introduced by Thatcher’s government, massively reduced the UK’s existing stock.

Now, since the late 1980s, the amount of council housing built is negligible.