Average sum owed by people seeking debt help passes £10,000 – Citizens Advice

The average debt among people across England and Wales going to Citizens Advice for support has passed £10,000 for the first time on the charity’s records.

The service said the increase is being driven by essential bills such as energy, council tax and housing debts.

Average debt has been above £10,000 since June and the trend has persisted for around a quarter of a year.

Citizens Advice has been tracking average debt among the people it helps with debt advice since the pre-coronavirus era of 2019, when the figure was around £7,000.

On average more than 48,000 people across England and Wales per month have sought help with debt from Citizens Advice so far this year – a 37% increase compared with 2022.

Half (51%) of those asking for debt support are in a negative budget, meaning their essential costs outstrip their income.

These households face an average monthly shortfall of £254, which the charity said could be nearly equivalent to a full week’s rent.

Among the people Citizens Advice sees who have some money left at the end of each month and so could potentially pay off debts, a third (33%) are likely to take more than a decade to clear them, the charity said, excluding any interest or fees.

Tom MacInnes, director of policy at Citizens Advice, described debt as “the elephant in the room” and said ways out of debt are needed “for those who simply can’t repay”.

He said: “Every day our advisers are helping people with increasingly complex debt across multiple essential bills.

“People are doing all they can but are building up levels of debt that decades of repayments won’t touch. This leaves families at breaking point and trapped in the red.

“When every spare penny gets spent on trying to clear debts built up due to the cost-of-living crisis, higher wages or lower bills don’t lead to people feeling better off.”