Britain will never build enough houses to make property affordable for young people, according to research.

A study presented to the Royal Economic Society’s annual conference said those hoping to get on the ladder may have to rely on windows of opportunity created by periodic slumps in the market.

However, the overall trend will remain for residential property price rises to outpace salary growth, according to economists at the University of Reading.

“The increases in housing supply required to improve affordability have to be very large and long-lasting; the step change would need to be much larger than has ever been experienced before on a permanent basis,” said Geoffrey Meen, Alexander Mihailov and Yehui Wang.

The government has discussed moves to increase the supply of homes but the changes are on far too small a scale to act as a brake on price rises.