[Boxed in]

The parts of the country where residents don’t have enough room to swing a cat

Afailure to build enough homes is shrinking living space in cities across the UK.

That’s according to a new report by UK thinktank Centre for Cities, which details the change in people’s accommodation over the last decade.

The average home in Coventry has shrank by 9.3% since 2011, when looking at floor space per person.

Brighton and Exeter have also seen large decreases in the amount of space people have on average (-3.4% and -2.8% respectively).

However, they are not the most cramped areas when it comes to housing.

That unfortunate title goes to Slough, where the average person has just 27.2 square meters of floor.

Slough is followed by Luton (28.5sqm), Coventry (30.4sqm), and Oxford (31.7sqm).

The shrinkage in living space is not seen across the entire UK.

Cambridge has seen average living space per person grow by over 10% since 2011 – the largest increase in the country.

On average across the UK, people in cities have 36.6sqm of floor space each, compared to 43.1sqm per person outside of urban areas.

The report found that those cities with the least space are mostly expensive cities in the South East, where housing supply has failed to keep up with demand.

This has led to increasing numbers of young professionals and other workers living in houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs), which has driven the average space per person down.

The report - which was created using data from Energy Performance Certificates - also warns that living in a city with more residential space per person is not without disadvantages.

Cities with the most living space typically offer residents fewer job opportunities and lower incomes.

In Birkenhead - the city with the second highest residential space per person - people are paid the third lowest weekly wages in the UK, and the city has the fifth highest proportion of under-25s claiming Job Seekers’ Allowance.

Andrew Carter, Chief Executive of Centre for Cities said: “A failure to deliver enough housing in the economically successful cities that need it most is resulting in many workers sharing flats and houses of multiple occupancy.

“This shrinks the average living space that they have.

“The next Government should expand upon the work already done on permitted development rights and strengthen local housing plans against NIMBY opposition.

“Once a local plan is in place it should expect to be delivered except in the most exceptional circumstances.”