August 2016: Money Statistics

Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for August 2016:

Personal debt in the UK

• People in the UK owed £1.484 trillion at the end of June 2016. This is up from £1.444 trillion at the end of June 2015 – an extra £777.90 per UK adult.
• Per adult in the UK that’s an average debt of £29,379 in June – around 112.2% of average earnings. This is slightly up from a revised £29,203 a month earlier.
• According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s July 2015 forecast, household debt is predicted to reach £2.551 trillion in Q1 2021. This makes the average household debt £94,481 (assuming that the number of households in the UK remained the same between now and Q1 2021).
• Per household, that’s an average consumer credit debt of £6,889 in June, up from a revised £6,833 in May – or £366.15 extra per household over the year.
• There were 22,503 individual insolvencies in England and Wales in Q2 2016. This is equivalent to 247 people a day or, one person every 5 minutes 49 seconds. This was up 6.9% on the previous quarter and up 22.4% on  the same period a year ago.  

Spending and Loans

• During April 2016 an average of 461 purchases were made in the UK every second using debit and credit cards, based on figures from the UK Cards Association.
• According to the AA, it costs 51.60 pence per mile to run a car. This is based on buying a new petrol car for between £13,000 and £18,000, replacing it after 4 years, and averaging 10,000 miles per year.
• The average interest rate on credit card lending bearing interest was 18.42% in April. This is 17.92% above the Bank of England Base Rate (0.5%).
• British Bankers Association figures show that 57.1% of credit card balances were bearing interest in June 2016.

Mortgages, rent and housing

• Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1.298 trillion at the end of June. This is up from £1.268 trillion a year earlier.
• That means that the estimated average outstanding mortgage for the 11.1m households with mortgage debt was £117,162 in June.
• According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, gross mortgage lending in June totalled an estimated £20.7 billion.
  • This is 3% higher than June 2015, and up 16% up on May.
• The Financial Conduct Authority reports that 68.34% of mortgage lending in Q1 2016 was for 75% or less of a property’s value.
  • 2.72% of lending was for mortgages for over 90% of a property’s value.
• The Office of National Statistics say that the average house price for first-time buyers was £220,000 in March 2016, which is an annual increase of 8%.

A full report of the statistics can be found here.