CreditAction Debt Statistics November 2012

Outstanding personal debt stood at £1.415 trillion at the end of September 2012.

• This is up from £1.406 trillion at the end of September 2011.

Individuals owed nearly as much as the entire country produced during the whole of 2011.

Outstanding secured (mortgage) lending stood at £1.257 trillion at the end of September 2012.

• This is up from £1.242 trillion at the end of September 2011.

Outstanding unsecured (consumer credit) lending stood at £158 billion at the end of September 2012.

• This is down from £164 billion at the end of September 2011.

Average household debt in the UK (excluding mortgages) was £5,991 in September.

• This is up from a revised £5,939 in August.

Average household debt in the UK (including mortgages) was £53,785 in September.

• This is up from a revised £53,719 in August.

The average amount owed per UK adult (including mortgages) was £28,797 in September.

• This is up from a revised £28,761 in August, and was around 116% of average earnings.

Average consumer borrowing (including credit cards, motor and retail finance deals, overdrafts and unsecured loans) per UK adult was £3,208 in September. This is up from a revised £3,180 in August.

The estimated average outstanding mortgage for the 11.2m households that carry mortgage debt stood at £111,881 in September.

Based on September 2012 trends, the UK’s total interest repayments on personal debt over a 12 month period would have been £60.3 billion.

• This is equivalent to £165 million per day.
• This means that UK households would have paid an average of £2,292 in annual interest repayments.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts that total household debt will reach £2.044 trillion in Q1 2017.

• This would mean that average household debt would reach £77,719 (assuming that the number of households in the UK remained the same between now and Q1 2017).

Net lending by UK Banks and Building Societies rose by £1.7 billion in total in September 2012. Net secured lending rose by £0.5 billion in the month.

• Net consumer credit lending rose by £1.2 billion.

UK Banks and Building Societies wrote-off £5.3 billion of loans to individuals over the 4 quarters to Q2 2012.

• In Q2 2012 itself they wrote-off £1.15 billion (of which £567 million was credit card debt) amounting to a daily write-off of £12.52m.

Every Day in the UK

• Based on the latest available data, Credit Action estimates that every day in the UK:
• 299 people are declared insolvent or bankrupt every day (based on Q2 2012 trends). This is equivalent to one person every 4 minutes 49 seconds.
• 1,170 Consumer County Court Judgements (CCJs) are issued every day (based on Q2 2012 trends). The average value of a Consumer CCJ in Q2 2012 was £3,217.
• Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 8,465 new debt problems every working day during the year ending June 2012.
• It costs an average of £28.44 per day to raise a child from birth to the age of 21.
• 93 properties are repossessed every day (based on Q2 2012 trends).
• 79 new people a day became unemployed for over 12 months during the year ending August 2012.
• 1,432 people a day reported they had become redundant between June and August 2012.
• Public Sector Net Borrowing (excluding financial interventions) was £12.8bn in September, meaning that the Government borrowed an average of £426,666,667 per day during the month (equivalent to £4,938 per second).
• 164 mortgage possession claims are issued and 127 mortgage possession orders are made every day
• 396 landlord possession claims are issued and 279 landlord possession orders are made every day.
• The UK population is growing by an estimated 1,342 people a day.
• 27.2m plastic card purchase transactions were made every day in August 2012 with a total value of £1.325 billion.
• 8.7m cash machine transactions were made every day in September with a total value of £344m.
• The average car costs £18.33 per day to run.
• It cost £69.45 to fill a 50 litre tank with unleaded petrol in October.