November Debt Statistics in the UK:

• The average household debt will increase by £0.20 today (it grew by £11.11 a day in January 2008).
• 386 people today will be declared insolvent or bankrupt. KPMG estimate this will increase to 411 people a day throughout 2009 or 1 person becoming bankrupt or entering into an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) every 3.72 minutes.
• 1,000 people are seeking some form of formal debt rescheduling every working day.
• 230,137 unsolicited telephone calls made to UK consumers daily by debt management and personal loan companies.
• In the last 12 months consumers saved an average of £2.98 every day.
• 2,000 Consumer County Court Judgements (CCJs) were issued every day in the first 3 months of 2009.
• 128 properties were repossessed every day during the last 3 months to end September 2009. The Council of Mortgage lenders estimates this will increase to approximately 132 a day throughout 2009.
• Unemployment increased by 1,723 people every day during 12 months to end September 2009.
• 2,247 people reported they had become redundant every day during 3 months to end September 2009.
• 300 young people (16 – 24s) have become a NEET (not in education, employment or training) every day during the last 12 months. The increase has been 1,348 a day during Q3 2009.
• £369m is the amount that the Government Public Sector net debt (PSDN) will grow today (equivalent to £4,268 per second).
• £72m is the interest the Government has to pay each day on the UKs net debt of £830bn. This is projected to rise to £118m a day (£43bn) in 2010 – 2011 financial year.
• 25,250 applications for consumer credit have been turned down every day.
• 267 mortgage possession claims will be issued and 188 mortgage possession orders will be made today.
• 368 landlord possession claims will be issued and 258 landlord possession orders will be made today.
• The UK population is projected to grow by 1,100 people a day over the next decade.
• 21.9m plastic card purchase transactions will be made today with a total value of £1.05bn.
• 8.1m cash withdrawals will be made today with a total value of £530m.
• Citizen Advice Bureaus dealt with 9,300 new debt problems every day in England and Wales.
• The average car will cost £15.13 to run today.    

Plastic card & Personal Loans

• uSwitch calculations estimate that 7.3m consumers currently make over 38m cash withdrawals using a credit card every year. The interest rate applied to withdrawals has rocketed by 41% over the past three years from 21.22% APR in 2005 to almost 30% APR. 
• 768,000 (47.5%) applications for consumer credit were rejected by the major UK lenders in July.
• uSwitch estimates that 16.3m consumers have an average of 2.3 credit cards they no longer use. Of those with unused credit cards, almost one in ten consumers (8%) have as many as four and 7% have between five and six. In total, these consumers have 38m credit cards that they don’t use, with a total credit limit of £200bn.
• According to the BBA the proportion of credit card balances bearing interest was 73.6% in July 2009.
• Total credit card debt in October 2009 was £54.5bn. The UK collective credit limit on credit cards is £158bn, which is an average credit card limit of £5,129 per person.
• PricewaterhouseCoopers in their precious plastic 2010 report estimate that the average borrowing per credit card has increased by 5% and has surpassed £1,000 for the first time.
• PwC say that bad debts have reached historic highs. Total credit card write-offs stood at 5.8% (£3.2bn) of outstanding balances in 2008. PwC’s forecast suggests that write-offs will continue to increase and could reach 9% of outstanding balances by the end of 2010.
• The average interest rate on credit card lending is currently 18.4%, which is 17.54% above base rate (0.5%).
• There were 146.3m debit, credit or charge cards in circulation in the UK at the end of 2008 according to APACS. An average 254 plastic card purchases were made in the UK every second during Q2 2009 using debit and credit cards (equal to £12,113 /second). 94 cash withdrawals were made every second (equal to £6,139 / second) from UK’s 63,678 cash machines during Q2 2009.
• There are more credit cards in the UK than people according to APACS. At the end of 2008 there were 71.3m credit and charge cards in the UK compared with around 60 million people in the country.

Young people - the IPOD generation (under 30)

• The proportion of 18-24 year olds not in education, employment or training (NEET) increased by 113,000 in the last 12 months to end Q3 2009 and now stands at 933,000 (19.7%). The proportion of 16-18 year olds not in education, employment or training (NEET) stood at 261,000 (13.4%) at the end of Q3 2009. The total of 16 – 24 classed as NEETS now stands at 1.082m which is the highest on record.
• AXA estimate that a fifth of 18-24 year-olds drink alcohol to take their mind off their financial concerns.
• The unemployment rate for 18 to 24 year olds increased by 24,000 (3.3%) on the quarter and 165,000 (28.5%) in the last 12 months to reach 746,000. This means that 18.0% of all 18 to 24 year olds are unemployed which is the highest figure since records for this series began in 1992. 325,000 (43.6%) have been unemployed for longer than 6 months.
• Research from Sainsbury’s Finance highlights that over half of undergraduate students (53%) in the UK are to be given financial assistance by their parents to see them through the financial burden of university.  The average amount of parental financial support given to undergraduates is £8,070 per student during their university life. 
• The UK's largest survey of student finance, published by Push.co.uk, reveals that students who started at university last year can expect to owe nearly £21,200 by the time they leave and new students should reckon on at least £2,000 more than that.

Source: creditaction.org.uk