Debt statistics reveal drop in household debt last Christmas

Feb 3 2012
Money education charity, Credit Action has released the February debt statistics, a monthly release based on the latest available data which details the level of debt in the UK.

Headline statistics from the release include:

- £55,823 is the average household debt including mortgages, and £7,948 is the average household debt excluding mortgages
- £29,547 is the average amount owed by every UK adult (including mortgages)
- £171 million is the personal interest paid in UK daily
- 1,797 people are made redundant daily
- 857,000 people have been unemployed for more than 12 months
- 331 people are declared insolvent or bankrupt every day
- £15.68 million of loans are written-off every day by banks & building societies
- Every 14 minutes 17 seconds a property is repossessed
- CAB deal with 8,652 new debt problems each working day
- £66.75 is the amount it costs to fill a car with a 50-litre tank with unleaded petrol
- 26.2 million is the number of plastic card purchases made every day, with a total value of £1.252 billion

Figures for the first three bullet points apply specifically to December, other figures are based on the latest available data – see the full Debt Statistics for more detail.

Whilst you would expect December to be a time of high consumer spending, the figures for December not only show a decrease in average household debt (excluding mortgages), but a significant acceleration in how much it fell by. In December 2011, the decline accelerated by 50% compared with the previous month, down to £7,948 from £7,972. The daily amount of interest paid on personal debt also decreased in December 2011 from £173 million to £171 million. Meanwhile, the number of people made redundant every day has risen. Between September and November, there were 1,797 redundancies every day, up 153 from 1,644 in the previous quarter.

Michelle Highman, CEO of Credit Action says: “Put in context these are striking figures with the decrease in average household debt not necessarily a cause for celebration. I suspect that these figures in fact represent an increased level of caution and concern in your average household, which impacted confidence in putting Christmas on credit last year. Whilst it is heartening that people did not overspend, the underlying reasons for not doing so may prove to be a real cause for concern in the coming year.”

The full Debt Statistics can be downloaded from the Credit Action website: http://www.creditaction.org.uk/helpful-resources/debt-statistics.html

Related link: www.creditaction.org.uk/helpful-resources/debt-statistics.html

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