Money Statistics: May 2023

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

Personal debt in the UK

• People in the UK owed £1,839.7 billion at the end of March 2023.
• The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £65,513 and per adult was £34,589, around 105.3% of average earnings.
• Net mortgage lending shrunk by £1.3 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending increased by £464 billion.
• Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales answered 393,757 enquiries in April 2023, 13.9% up from April 2022..

Spending and Loans

• On average, 49.4 cash machine transactions (including balance enquiries and rejected transactions) were made every second in April 2023, a decrease of 5.2% on April 2022.
• The number of ATMs (in-branch and remote) fell from 53,398 at the end of 2021 to 50,300 at the end of 2022 (a fall of 5.8%).
• In Q4 2022, households in the UK spent £111.42 million a day on water, electricity and gas, or £3.97 per household per day.
• UK Finance figures show that 51.1% of credit card balances were bearing interest in February 2023.

Mortgages, Rent and Housing

• Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1,627.4 billion at the end of March 2023.
• The average mortgage interest rate was 2.75% at the end of March 2023. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £4,113 in mortgage interest over the year.
• HM Land Registry reports that the average house price for first-time buyers in Great Britain was £238,742 in February 2023, an annual increase of 5.0% and a monthly change of –1.0%.
• According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK rose by 4.9% in the 12 months to March 2023.

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 millionpeople 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+.
• 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.