England is now ‘the most difficult place to find a home in the developed world’, housebuilders have claimed in a snapshot of the housing crisis that also found a greater proportion of people in England live in substandard properties than the European Union average.

The Home Builders Federation (HBF) found that England has the lowest percentage of vacant homes per capita in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a group of 38 nations, including most of the EU the US, Japan and Australia.

About a quarter of private renters in the UK are also ‘overburdened’ by housing costs – spending more than 40% of income, compared with just 9% in France and 5% in Germany, according to OECD data.

Stewart Baseley, the executive chair of the HBF, said the figures are “a wake-up call, demonstrating the urgent need to act now to prevent us falling even further behind.”

Baseley added: “Developers are still too often hampered by a restrictive planning system, an anti-development mindset and short-term politics trumping the needs of communities. The country is in dire need of more high quality and energy efficient new homes.”