The average wait for council housing has almost hit the three-year mark with one London borough reporting the average wait to be over 25 years.
Freedom of Information requests made by the Alan Boswell Group, an insurance firm that specialises in unoccupied homes, revealed there were around 1.2 million households in England on social housing waiting lists as of March 2023.
The FOI requests also found there are at least 46,000 empty council homes in the UK.
The average wait time for council housing is 2.9 years, increasing to 6.6 years in Greater London.
The borough of Barking and Dagenham has the longest average wait in the UK at 25.75 years, which includes a 67 year wait on average for a four bedroom property.
Slough Borough Council reported the second highest waiting times in the UK with an average of 6.25 years.
The area with the lowest waiting times is South Derbyshire (94 days), followed by Stafford (4.2 months), South Tyneside (4.5 months) and North West Leicestershire (5.1 months).
