Money Statistics: December 2023

Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for December 2023

Personal debt in the UK

• People in the UK owed £1,846.5 billion at the end of October 2023.
• The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £65,756 and per adult was £34,716, around 100.7% of average earnings.
• Net mortgage lending increased by £7 million in the month, while net consumer credit lending increased by £315 million.
• Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales answered 232,063 enquiries in November 2023, 12.5% up from November 2022.

Mortgages, Rent and Housing

• Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1,627.1 billion at the end of October 2023.
• The average mortgage interest rate was 3.22% at the end of October 2023. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £4,865 in mortgage interest over the year.
• HM Land Registry reports that the average house price for first-time buyers in Great Britain was £242,000 in September 2023, an annual decrease of 0.3% and a monthly change of -0.4%.
• According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK rose by 6.1% in the 12 months to October 2023.

Spending and Loans

• On average, 46.7 cash machine transactions (including balance enquiries and rejected transactions) were made every second in November 2023, a decrease of 8.3% on November 2022.
• The number of ATMs (in-branch and remote) fell from 53,398 at the end of 2021 to 50,300 at the end of 2022 (a fall of 5.8%).
• In Q2 2023, households in the UK spent £117.13 million a day on water, electricity and gas, or £4.17 per household per day.
• UK Finance figures show that 50.1% of credit card balances were bearing interest in August 2023.

Financial Inclusion

• According to the FCA, in the UK in 2022 there were 1.1 million adults who did not have a bank account. This was 2.1% of the UK adult population.
• According to the FCA Financial Lives Survey, in May 2022, 3.1 million people said they had paid for everything or most things using cash in the last 12 months.
• According to Ofcom, 1.5 million households did not have access to the Internet in March 2021. This included 18% of households with members aged 65+.
• Fair By Design has estimated that the cost of the poverty premium to a typical parliamentary constituency is £4.5 million a year. This equates to over £430 per year for a low-income household.

The full report can be found here.