Total UK personal debt stands at £1,452bn

2 June 2011 | By Natalie Thomas

However the twelve-month growth rate remained unchanged at 0.8%.

UK banks and building societies wrote off £9.5bn of loans to individuals in the four quarters to end Q1 2011, in Q1 2011 they wrote off £1.89bn  - £866m of which was credit card debt.

This amounts to a write-off of £20.71m a day.

Meanwhile, the average household debt in the UK is now £8,121 - excluding mortgages. This figure increases to £15,618 if the average is based on the number of households who actually have some form of unsecured loan.

Average household debt in the UK is ~ £55,854 when mortgages are included.

If you add to this the March 2010 budget report figure for public sector net debt expected in 2015-16 then this figure rises to £106,470 per household.

Average owed by every UK adult is - £29,835, including mortgages. This is 121% of average earnings.

While the average outstanding mortgage for the 11.4m households who currently have mortgages now stands at £109,018.

Joanna Parsley, associate director at Credit Action says: “June’s debt statistics show some interesting trends. As consumers we are choosing to pay down our debts, as this month shows that on average household debt excluding mortgages decreased by £23 to £8,121 and similarly, average household debt including mortgages fell by £16 to £55,854.

“Paying down debt is good, sensible money management advice, yet as consumers we’re doing it against a backdrop of an ever increasing cost of living.

“The CPI reached 4.5% in April, and the cost of filling a car with a 50-litre tank with unleaded petrol has increased further, by 55p this month. For the average consumer, the squeeze on their household budget continues.”

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