Here is an overview of The Money Charity’s latest statistics for March 2024
Personal debt in the UK
People in the UK owed £1,838.7 billion at the end of January 2024.
The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £65,479 and per adult was £34,570, around 99.1% of average earnings.
Net mortgage lending increased by £354 million in the month, while net consumer credit lending increased by £656 million.
Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales answered 250,686 enquiries in February 2024, 8.2% up from February 2023.
Mortgages, Rent and Housing
Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1,617 billion at the end of January 2024.
The average mortgage interest rate was 3.42% at the end of January 2024. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £5,146 in mortgage interest over the year.
HM Land Registry reports that the average house price for first-time buyers in Great Britain was £235,020 in January 2024, an annual decrease of -1.0% and a monthly change of –0.1%.
According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK rose by 9.0% in the 12 months to February 2024.
Spending and Loans
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 £430per year for a low-income household.
