Money Statistics: December 2021

Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for December 2021

Personal debt in the UK

• People in the UK owed £1,749.9 billion at the end of October 2021.
• The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £62,965 and per adult was £33,086, around 108.3% of average earnings.
• Net mortgage lending rose by £2.51 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending fell by £1.81 billion.
• Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales answered 391,015 enquiries in November 2021, 6.8% up from November 2020.

Spending and Loans

• On average, 51.2 cash machine transactions (including balance enquiries and rejected transactions) were made every second in November 2021, an increase of 12.4% on November 2020.
• The number of ATMs (in-branch and remote) fell from 60,662 at the end of 2019 to 54,574 at the end of 2020 (a fall of 10.0%.)
• In Q2 2021, households in the UK spent £120.5 million a day on water, electricity and gas, or £4.33 per household per day.
• UK Finance figures show that 53.7% of credit card balances were bearing interest in September 2021.

Mortgages, Rent and Housing

• Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1,553.5 billion at the end of October 2021.
• The average mortgage interest rate was 2.03%at the end of October 2021. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £2,857 in mortgage interest over the year.
• HM Land Registry reports that the average house price for first-time buyers in Great Britain was £222,997 in October 2021, an annual increase of 9.2% and a monthly change of –1.7%.
• According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK rose by 1.7% in the 12 months to November 2021.

Financial Inclusion

• According to the FCA, in the UK in 2020 there were 1.2 million adults who did not have a bank account. This was 2.3% of the UK adult population.
• According to the FCA Financial Lives Survey, in February 2020, 5.4 million people relied on cash to a great or very great extent, with 2.5 million using cash for all their payments.
• 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+.
• Recent research by Turn2us and Fair By Design found that low-income households pay a ‘poverty premium’ in buying their goods and services of £478 per year.

The full report can be found here.