The Money Statistics February 2021

People in the UK owed £1,696.4 billion at the end of December 2020.

This is up by £20.9 billion from £1,675.4 billion at the end of December 2019, an extra £395 per UK adult over the year.

The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £60,860.

Per adult this was £32,014, around 107.5% of average earnings. This is up from a revised £31,937 a month earlier.

Based on December 2020 numbers, the UK’s total interest payments on personal debt over a 12-month period would have been £44,910 million, an average of £123 million per day.

The average annual interest per household would have been £1,611 and per person £848, 2.85% of average earnings.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s November 2020 forecast, household debt of all types is forecast to rise from £2.062 trillion in 2020 to £2.373 trillion in 2025.

This would make the average household debt £83,308 (assuming household numbers track ONS population projections.)

At the end of December 2020, outstanding consumer credit lending was £202.1 billion, falling by £1.4 billion on the revised total for the previous month.

Within the total, outstanding credit card debt came to £58.4 billion, a decrease of 19.3% in the year to December 2020. Credit card debt averaged £2,094 per household and £1,101 per adult.

A credit card on the average interest would take 24 years and 10 months to repay, making only the legal minimum repayments each month.

The minimum repayment in the first month would be £54 but would reduce each month. If £54 were paid every month, the debt would be cleared in around 5 years and 2 months.

Total net lending to individuals and housing associations by UK banks and building societies rose by £4.07 billion in December 2020 or £131 million a day over revised figures for November 2020.

Net mortgage lending rose by £5.45 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending fell by £1.38 billion.

In Q3 2020 lenders wrote off £940 million (of which £365 million was credit card debt, amounting to a daily write-off of £4.0 million.)

The population of the UK grew by an estimated 990 people a day between 2018 and 2019.

On average, a UK household spends £4.29 a day on water, electricity and gas.

296 people a day were declared insolvent or bankrupt in England or Wales in November 2020 to January 2021. This was equivalent to one person every 4 minutes and 52 seconds.

In Northern Ireland in January 2021, there were 3.1 insolvencies per day and in Scotland 18.6 insolvencies per day.

Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 1,680 debt issues every day in the year to January 2021.

1.5 properties were repossessed every day in October to December 2020 in the UK, or one every 15 hours and 46 minutes.

The number of UK mortgages with arrears of over 2.5% of the remaining balance rose by 18 a day in the year to December 2020.

The number of people unemployed in the UK grew by 1,315 per day in the three months to December 2020.

3,728 people a day reported they had become redundant in October to December 2020.

Net lending to individuals and housing associations in the UK grew by £131 million a day in December 2020.

Government debt increased by £745 million a day in the year to January 2021.

Borrowers paid £123 million a day in interest in December 2020.

It costs an average of £23.25 per day for a couple to raise a child from birth to the age of 18.

For a lone parent family, the cost of raising a child comes to £28.22 per day.

2.8 mortgage possession claims and 0.3 mortgage possession orders were made every day in England and Wales in October to December 2020.

91 landlord possession claims and 23.9 landlord possession orders were made every day.