DUNDEE IS one of the few major towns or cities in Britain where key workers such as police officers and teachers are still able to afford to buy a home, a survey has found.

Bankers HBOS looked at how rising house prices compared to the increases in pay for certain public sector workers over the past five years to see if it had become harder to get on to the housing market.

Some 517 locations were studied and 363 of them were said to be unaffordable for police, fire-fighters, paramedics, nurses and teachers—almost double the 2002 figure.

The bank said the average first-time buyer now paid 4.46 times more for their home than their annual salary.

Any town where the key workers had to pay more than that was classed as unaffordable.

The problem is worst in London and the south-east, with the average house in some towns now going for close to 30 times a nurse’s annual gross pay.

That often means that people cannot afford to live in or near the communities where they work, leaving them travelling long distances.

However, Dundee is among the places where property prices have remained just about within reach, although first-time buyers are facing a greater challenge than they would have five years ago.

In March 2002 the average price for a house in the city was £61,961. Last month that had more than doubled to £138,688. Salaries have not risen at anywhere near that rate.

For example, a police officer in 2002 would have had to lay out just over twice his gross pay to buy a house in Dundee. It is now just under four times.

The other key workers have seen similar rises, but the overall price to income ratio for the city is low enough to put it in 447th place—well outside the ‘unaffordable’ category.

Elsewhere in Scotland, Glasgow just escapes being branded as unaffordable but Aberdeen and Edinburgh are both considered too expensive.

Bank chief economist Tim Crawford said, “Housing affordability continues to deteriorate for key workers across Britain and it is now clearly not a problem confined to the south of England.”

He noted that the Government had brought in several schemes aimed at improving affordability, such as Home Buy and Key Worker Living.

“They are providing some relief, but given recent trends there would clearly be benefits from broadening their reach,” he added.