I personally believe buying is the best outcome, yes it may be an expensive process but in the long term you will make savings- but on the other hand anything which goes wrong in terms of your electrics, boiler or plumbing you have to foot the full cost of the bill so you will need housing insurance . Also the house is your asset and your children can live in your house after you "kick the bucket" and it can be sold if you wish to move into a nicer house then you will have a big deposit and less in a mortgage burden - however this is only for people consistently on the move
I think it really depends on individual circumstances in terms of earnings, what your house is worth and if the bank will give you a loan. The house my parents currently rent is worth around 110,000, due to my parents being long term council tennants they can get up to 57% off the price which means we can get it 47300. My parents are quite old and the bank based on the wages would not lend them the money to buy the house and my income which is quite low (live in deprived area).
Again I am going off my parents bills- renting in the public sector is around £390 a month, this is where I am going to make the case for buying a house as a long term cash saving, Most houses in my area are around the 100-150,000 bracket. So I am going to say Daz (me) is going to buy a house at the lower estimate of 100,000. A quick google search finds me the current mortgage interest rate is 3.92% so will cost me a total of 157,000 /25=6,276 per year.
Whilst renting at £390 a month may be cheaper in the short term, in the sense that you have no interest and the government set the rates lower , over the long term you are going to be paying more and the house does not belong to you, After 34 years of council renting you would of paid more if you brought the house, also you do get a discount via right to buy if you have rented more than 5 years (35%) and an additional 1% for every year after that
It depends how well you can budget and your access to finance, if you don't earn that much it is likely you are not going to get the access to the finance the bank are not loaning you 100,000 for 15 hrs a week at the NMW/NL. If you can not budget efficiently it is likely you will live in poverty and or get into debt, i know this is a bit of an extreme- but a distinct posibility
TLDR
1. Prefer buying over renting- house is yours and cheaper then long term renting (30 yrs plus)
2. There is no harm in short term public renting to access discounts via right to buy scheme (council tennant for 3-5 years- min doscount of 35% of value )
3. You will need to be in a semi decent financial position to buy a house- banks do not borrow huge amounts of money to someone on shite income
4. Make sure you budget well
Please don't have a go for the length of this post.