Money Statistics: April 2024

Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for April 2024

Personal debt in the UK

• People in the UK owed £1,841.2 billion at the end of February 2024.
• The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £65,569 and per adult was £34,617, around 99.2% of average earnings.
• Net mortgage lending decreased by £1.48 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending increased by £5.91 million.
• Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales answered 238,430 enquiries in March 2024, 7.08% down from March 2023.

Mortgages, Rent and Housing

• Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1,619 billion at the end of February 2024.
• The average mortgage interest rate was 3.49% at the end of February 2024. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £5,256 in mortgage interest over the year.
• HM Land Registry reports that the average house price for first-time buyers in Great Britain was £234,654 in February 2024, an annual decrease of -0.3% and a monthly change of 0.7%.
• According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK rose by 9.2% in the 12 months to March 2024.

Spending and Loans

• On average, 44.8 cash machine transactions (including balance enquiries and rejected transactions) were made every second in March 2024, a decrease of 5.5% on March 2023.
• The number of ATMs (in-branch and remote) fell from 50,300 at the end of 2022 to 47,711 at the end of 2023 (a fall of 5.2%).
• In Q4 2023, households in the UK spent £96.43 million a day on water, electricity and gas, or £3.43 per household per day.
• UK Finance figures show that 50.5% of credit card balances were bearing interest in January 2024.

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.