Credit Action releases October debt statistics

Key statistics from the release, which shows month-by-month trends, include:

- £55,822 is the average household debt (including mortgages)

- £29,546 is the average amount owed by every UK adult (including mortgages)

- £175m is the personal interest paid in UK daily

- 1,775 people are made redundant daily

- 849,000 people have been unemployed for more than 12 months

- £22.54m is the daily write-offs of loans by banks & building societies

- Every 14.6 minutes a property is repossessed

- CAB deal with 8,910 new debt problems each working day

- £111,500,000 is the daily increase in Government national debt (PSDN)

- £1,278,000,000 is the total value of all purchases made using plastic cards today

Liz Dunscombe, Director of Project & Partnership Development at Credit Action says:

"That the October debt statistics show some concerning indicators will come as no great surprise."

The annual growth rate in consumer lending has risen to 2.3%, its highest level since May 2009. With consumer confidence persistently low, this may suggest that people have been forced to borrow more to meet existing commitments over the past year.

Moreover, given that daily write offs of loans by banks and building societies increased in Q2 2011 to £22.54m, a worrying picture begins to emerge.

Additional pressure has been placed on some on family budgets due to recent increases in redundancies and long-term unemployment.

The number of daily redundancies rose to 1,775 in the 3 months to the end of July,  whilst the total number of people who have been out of work for over a year also increased to 849,000, up 2.5% on the previous quarter and 6.4% over the past year.