The UK's Debt - What Is The State Of Play Today

View PDF | Print View
by: Keith Cooper
Total views: 66
Word Count: 515
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 Time: 10:08 AM
0 comments

The UK today is in the midst of the worst economic recession for over thirty years, and this has had an incredible impact on the financial situation of the British public. According to statistics in November 2010 there are currently 1,566 people being made redundant on a daily basis and the average debt per household has risen to £57,810, with £181 million in personal interest paid in each day. Even more shocking than this, is the fact that a property is being repossessed every 14 minutes or 103 people a day or 37,542 per year and someone will be declared bankrupt or insolvent every 3.78 minutes.

By the end of August 2010 the total of UK personal debt had reached £1,457 billion, which represents a 0.9% increase over a twelve month period and means that individuals actually owe more than what the whole country produces in a year. The average debt per household in the UK is approximately £8,590 when excluding mortgages but this figure rises to £17,896 if the average is based on the number of households with an unsecured loan and when mortgages are included the average debt per household reaches a staggering £57,810.

The British people are weighed down by debt and struggling to pay off mortgages despite the drop in interest rates. It is very worrying to discover that of the 11.4 million households that currently have mortgages the average outstanding amount is £108,956.

Personal debts amount to a huge amount as just the interest alone in the UK amounted to nearly £66.0 billion over the last 12months. In fact, the average interest paid by each household on their total debt is approaching £2,619 per year and according to a recent report commissioned by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), the average household will have to spend almost 15% of their net income simply to service the interest payments that have arisen from this debt.

These figures also showed that by the end of August this year the average adult in the UK had borrowed £4,447 through credit cards, overdrafts, unsecured personal loans and finance deals. The number of people being declared insolvent or bankrupt has raised sharply to.381 people each day of the year.

Over 1,000 Consumer County Court Judgments (CCJs) were issued during the second quarter of 2010 with the average judgment totaling £4,063 and the Citizens Advice Bureau has been dealing with 9,000 new debt problems every day during this same period, with 1000 per day looking for debt rescheduling and repayment plans.

The link between the number of redundancies and the number of repossessions is quite alarmingly clear. 1,556 people per day stated that they had been made redundant during the three months to the end July 2010 and during this same period over 100 properties per day were being repossessed.

Unfortunately this trend of rising debt appears to be ongoing and with the recent public sector cuts, large corporate cutting jobs and small businesses fighting to survive, it does not look like ending any time soon. This means that the British public will continue to struggle to keep their heads above water, as the debts and resulting interest payments mount up.

About the Author

Keith Cooper writes about all things debt related, whether you need Debt Management Solution advice or Bankruptcy Advice then Keith will have come across these areas in his decade of experience in all things debt. Keith Works for one of the Largest Debt Companies in the UK Baines and Ernst