Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for October 2020
Personal debt in the UK
- People in the UK owed £1,684 billion at the end of August 2020.
- The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £60,526 and per adult was £31,972, around 111.5% of average earnings.
- Net mortgage lending rose by £3.18 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending fell by £96 million.
- Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales answered 310,264 enquiries in August 2020, 18.1% down on August 2019.
Spending and Loans
- On average, 53.5 cash machine transactions (including balance enquiries and rejected transactions) were made every second in September 2020, a fall of 34.3% on September 2019.
- The number of ATMs (in-branch and remote) fell from 63,160 at the end of 2018 to 60,662 at the end of 2019 (a fall of 4.0%)
- In Q2 2020, households in the UK spent £116 million a day on water, electricity and gas, or £4.16 per household per day.
- UK Finance figures show that 53.8% of credit card balances were bearing interest in July 2020.
Mortgages and Rent
- Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1.476 trillion at the end of August 2020.
- The average mortgage interest rate was 2.14% at the end of August 2020. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £2,882 in mortgage interest over the year.
- HM Land Registry reports that the average house price for first-time buyers in Great Britain was £200,414 in August 2020, an annual increase of 2.1% and a monthly increase of 0.6%.
- According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK rose by 1.5% in the 12 months to September 2020.
Financial Inclusion
- According to the FCA, in the UK in 2017 there were 1.3 million people who did not have a bank account. This was 3% of the UK adult population.
- According to the 2019 Access to Cash Review, 2.2 million people use only cash in their daily transactions.
- According to ONS, 1.11 million households did not have access to the Internet in Jan-Feb 2020. This included 20% of one adult households aged 65+.
- Low-income people pay a ‘poverty premium’ in buying their goods and services of £256-£490 per year, according to the Social Market Foundation
The full report can be found here.
