House prices across England and Wales ended last year averaging £188,270.

The Land Registry says this was 6.4% above December 2014.

In London, the average was £514,097 – up 12.4% annually, a rate beaten by commuter town Reading where prices surged 17.1% over the year to an average of £266,045.

Average prices in Luton in Bedfordshire, a 45-minute commute from London, were up by 14.7% to £164,284.

England’s third property hotspot was Slough, Berkshire, with a rise of 14.1% and average prices at £226,096.

Average prices in outer London boroughs also rose significantly. Barking and Dagenham had a year-on-year increase of 15.3%, bringing average house prices in this east London borough to £309,760.

Other areas on the fringes of London with big annual property price rises were Havering (12.4%), Bexley (12.3%) and Croydon (12.2%). Newham in east London, where Crossrail is set to arrive in 2019, saw a year-on-year rise of 11.9% and an average property price of £325,298.

This compares with moderate price increases in prime central London areas, with average house prices in Hammersmith and Fulham up by 3.3% and Kensington and Chelsea by 3.6%.

The region with the lowest annual house price inflation was the north-east at 0.8%.

Sales volumes continued their slide, with 79,960 transactions in October last year – the latest month for which data is available – compared with 86,452 in October 2014, a fall of 8%.

In London, there was a fall of 13% in the number of sales – 9,095, down from 10,460.