Money Statistics: August 2023

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

Personal debt in the UK

• People in the UK owed £1,842.6 billion at the end of June 2023.
• The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £65,619 and per adult was £34,644, around 103.5% of average earnings.
• Net mortgage lending increased by £256 million in the month, while net consumer credit lending increased by £350 million.
• Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales answered 440,695 enquiries in July 2023, 16.7% up from July 2022.

Spending and Loans

• On average, 48.2 cash machine transactions (including balance enquiries and rejected transactions) were made every second in July 2023, a decrease of 13.3% on July 2022.
• The number of ATMs (in-branch and remote) fell from 53,398at the end of 2021 to 50,300 at the end of 2022 (a fall of 5.8%).
• In Q1 2023, households in the UK spent £115.98 million a day on water, electricity and gas, or £4.13 per household per day.
• UK Finance figures show that 49.7 % of credit card balances were bearing interest in May 2023.

Mortgages, Rent and Housing

• Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1,627.4 billion at the end of June 2023.
• The average mortgage interest rate was 2.93% at the end of June 2023. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £4,383 in mortgage interest over the year.
• HM Land Registry reports that the average house price for first-time buyers in Great Britain was £239,589 in June 2023, an annual increase of 1.5% and a monthly change of 0.8%.
• According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK rose by 5.3% in the 12 months to July 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 adults said that 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 one adult households aged 65+.
• Research by The Social Market Foundation found that low-income households pay a ‘poverty premium’ in buying their goods and services of £490 per year.

The full report can be found here.