GOVERNMENT support to protect tenants and landlords during the coronavirus outbreak will not prevent renters from facing months of arrears payments, researchers have claimed.

In Newport, tenants could take more than five months to pay off three months' rent arrears, according to the study by housing deposit firm Ome.

Currently, tenants who cannot pay their rent are safe from eviction during the pandemic, and landlords with cashflow problems are protected by a mortgage holiday on buy-to-let properties.

The UK government has extended both schemes while the outbreak continues.

But Ome's research found that once these support schemes are withdrawn, tenants on average salaries could struggle to keep up if arrears re-payments are based on their wage packets.

By taking the average wage and the average rental price in Newport, researchers found it would take 5.2 months to re-pay three months of arrears.

The study covered major cities across the UK, and found Oxford, London, and Bristol to be the three places where tenants may face the most daunting re-payment periods.

In Oxford, it could take 11-and-a-half months to re-pay three months' worth of rental arrears, Ome found.

The firm's co-founder Matthew Hooker said tenants and landlords were in "a tough spot" during the pandemic.

The government's support schemes were "only a temporary fix to a problem that isn’t going to go away any time soon", he added.

"Landlords will still be required to pay the outstanding amount owed on their mortgage at a later date and tenants are still legally obliged to pay the rent owed," Mr Hooker said.

"The reality is, that many remain unable to do so and this presents long-term financial implications with many facing long periods of rent arrears payments in order to clear their balance sheet.

"There is also a very real danger that many landlords may well decide to cut their losses once the eviction ban is lifted and look for a tenant less impacted by Covid-19 so they can at least pull in some rental income going forward, but with huge backlogs of evictions already building this could also prove a painfully slow process.”