Britons live in the smallest homes in Western Europe because of draconian planning laws restricting house building, a report found yesterday.

Residential floor space in Britain is on average just 66 square metres (710 square feet) per household, compared to a spacious 118 square metres (1,270 sq ft) in Ireland, 115 square metres (1,238 sq ft) in Denmark or 110 square metres (1,184 sq ft) in Italy, according to data compiled by the Institute of Economic Affairs.

The UK languished at the bottom of the think-tank’s list, below Greece and Luxembourg – which still had significantly more space with 78 and 84 square metres (840 and 904 square feet) respectively.

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Residential floor space in Britain is on average just 66 square metres (710 square feet) per household - pictured is a former council flat in Bethnal Green, London

Ryan Bourne, the IEA’s head of public policy, said: ‘Some believe the UK doesn’t have a housing shortage because many households have “spare rooms”. But rooms in the UK tend to be much smaller than in other countries.

‘All the evidence suggests that years of tight planning controls restricting house building has led to us having the smallest space per household in Western Europe.’ The figures were compiled as part of a report which confronted some of the most widely-held views about the cost of living crisis.

The IEA contests the claim that Britain has enough houses but too many people live in particular areas and should move to less populated parts of the country.

Instead, it said, house building simply has not kept up with the growing population.

Britons live in the smallest homes in Western Europe, a report has revealed - pictured are six houses in Llanhilleth, south Wales that were sold for just £100 in 2009

The number of people in the UK has risen by five million over the past 12 years and is growing faster than anywhere else in Europe. Last year, the number of people in the UK rose by more than 400,000 to pass 64million for the first time, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

The IEA report said: ‘Throughout more than three decades, the UK has been building fewer new homes than any other country in Europe.

‘As a result, residential floor space per household is now the lowest in Western Europe. This shows that the housing problem cannot be solved through redistribution… for the simple reason that there is not a lot to redistribute. The housing stock is inadequate in total. There is no “excess housing” in any region, only different degrees of shortfall.’

The report also claimed that areas which were in the most desperate need for new homes, including Greater London, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and Bath, had a ‘disproportionate share of greenbelt land and have particularly virulent anti-development campaigners’.

It added: ‘Paradoxically, the regions where demand is lowest account for a disproportionate share of the construction activity.’

The report came as a separate study by the ONS revealed that the number of houses built in the UK fell from 378,000 in the financial year 1969/70 to just 141,000 in 2013/14.