Three million working parents in England are being forced to cut back on food so they can afford to pay for their homes, a new study suggests.

A YouGov poll of working families has found that rising housing costs means that more and more Brits are diverting money they would have spent on food to support their living arrangements.

The English Housing Survey figures show that households are spending 28 per cent of their weekly income on housing costs alone - and that rises to 40 per cent for private renters.

And it also found that more than one in 10 parents, or over 750,000 people, have admitted to skipping meals rather than risk losing their homes.

The CEO of housing charity Shelter, Campbell Robb, said: 'This is a really terrible situation for many, many parents across the country. What we're seeing is that people are just struggling to keep up their costs. Housing has gone up, but other costs have gone up too.

'Generally speaking it's not about people being in places they can't afford. It's the places they're in becoming unaffordable.'

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