The Money Statistics May 2023

People in the UK owed £1,839.7 billion at the end of March 2023

This is up by £58.0 billion from £1,781.6 billion at the end of March 2022, an extra £1,091.15 per UK adult over the year.

The average total debt per household, including mortgages, was £65,513. 

Per adult this was £34,588, around 105.3% of average earnings. This is down from the revised £34,589 a month earlier.

Based on March 2023 numbers, the UK’s total interest payments on personal debt over a 12-month period would have been £60,927 million, an average of £167 million per day.

The average annual interest per household would have been £2,170 and per person £1,146, 3.49% of average earnings.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March 2023 forecast, household debt of all types is forecast to rise from £2,333 billion in 2023 to £2,478 billion in 2025.

This would make the average total household debt £86,994 (assuming household numbers track ONS population projections.)

At the end of March 2023, outstanding consumer credit lending was £212.3 billion, increasing by £1.2 billion on the revised total for the previous month.

Within the total, outstanding credit card debt came to £65.0 billion, an increase of 8.30% (£5.0 billion) in the year to March 2023. Credit card debt averaged £2,315 per household and £1,222 per adult.

A credit card on the average interest rate would take 26 years to repay, making only the legal minimum repayments (interest plus 1% of the outstanding balance) each month.

The minimum repayment in the first month would be £63 but would reduce each month. If £63 were paid every month, the debt would be cleared in 5 years.

Total net lending to individuals and housing associations by UK banks and building societies shrunk by £65 million in March 2023 or £2.1 million a day over revised figures for February 2023.

Net mortgage lending shrunk by £1.3 billion in the month, while net consumer credit lending increased by £464 million.

In Q4 2022 lenders wrote off £980 million (of which £359 million was credit card debt, amounting to a daily write-off of £10.7 million.)

The population of the UK grew by an estimated 777 people a day between 2019 and 2020.

On average, a UK household spends £3.97 a day on water, electricity and gas.

322 people a day were declared insolvent or bankrupt in England and Wales in February to April 2023. This was equivalent to one person every 4 minutes and 28 seconds.

In Northern Ireland in April 2023, there were 3.7 insolvencies per day. In Scotland in the three months to March 2023 there were 21.2 insolvencies per day.

Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 2,170 debt issues every day in the year to March 2023.

8.3 properties were repossessed every day in January to March 2022 in the UK, or one every 2 hours and 53 minutes.

The number of UK mortgages with arrears of over 2.5% of the remaining balance fell by 2.5 a day in the year to March 2023.

The number of people unemployed in the UK fell by 255 per day in the twelve months to January 2023.

1,076 people a day reported they had become redundant in October to December 2022.

Net lending to individuals and housing associations in the UK grew by £2.1 million a day in March 2023.

Government debt increased by £642 million a day in the three months to April 2023.

Borrowers paid £167 million a day in interest in March 2023.

It costs an average of £24.44 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 £29.50 per day.

44.8 mortgage possession claims and 9.9 mortgage possession orders were made every day in England and Wales in October to December 2022.

259.9 landlord possession claims and 74.2 landlord possession orders were made every day.