Money Statistics: October 2021

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

Personal debt in the UK

• People in the UK owed £1,745.7 billion at the end of August 2021.
• The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £62,813 and per adult was £33,006, around 108.9% of average earnings.
• Net mortgage lending rose by £4.72 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending fell by £65 million.
• Citizens Advice Bureaux across England and Wales answered 374,451 enquiries in September 2021, 5.8% up from September 2020.

Spending and Loans

• On average, 52.7 cash machine transactions (including balance enquiries and rejected transactions) were made every second in September 2021, a decrease of 1.4% on September 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 54.3% of credit card balances were bearing interest in July 2021.

Mortgages, Rent and Housing

• Outstanding mortgage lending stood at £1,548.1 billion at the end of August 2021.
• The average mortgage interest rate was 2.06% at the end of August 2021. Based on this, households with mortgages would pay an average of £2,891 in mortgage interest over the year.
• HM Land Registry reports that the average house price for first-time buyers in Great Britain was £220,460 in August 2021, an annual increase of 9.9% and a monthly increase of 2.5%.
• According to the Office for National Statistics, private rental prices in the UK rose by 1.3% in the 12 months to September 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.

Young People

• According to ONS, in June to August 2021 there were 5.33 million people aged 18 to 24. Of these, 1.94 million were in full-time education while 3.27 millionwere in employment.
• 395,000 18-24 year-olds (10.8%) were unemployed in June to August 2021.
• In 2019-20, the provisional average tuition fee loan in England was £8,413. In Wales it was £6,976 and in Northern Ireland £5,287.
• In England, the average student debt for the latest (2020/21) cohort entering repayment was £45,060. In Wales it was £27,600, in Northern Ireland £24,720 and in Scotland £15,170.

The Bigger Picture

• The CPI (Consumer Prices Index) increased by 3.1% in the year to September 2021.
• In the three months to August 2021, regular pay increased by 6.0% on the year before. Pay including bonuses rose by 7.2%.
• Public Sector Net Borrowing (excluding NatWest Group and Bank of England) in the three months to September 2021 was £44.7 billion, an average borrowing of £486 million per day.
• Out of a total population aged 15+ of 55.5 million, there are projected to be 32.2 million income taxpayers in 2021-22.

The full report can be found here.