Consumers have 1 million more debt every four minutes

The UK's personal debt is increasing by 1 million every four minutes, as mortgage and credit card debt hits 984.81 billion.

11:30 03 June 2004

The UK's personal debt is increasing by 1 million every four minutes, as mortgage and credit card debt hits 984.81 billion.

Time is ticking as personal expenditure rises minute-on-minute and Britons fall further and further into financial difficulties.

By the middle of this month consumers could owe 1 trillion: in April the Bank of England's figures showed that the amount owed through mortgages, credit cards, overdrafts and loans rose by 11.13 billion to hit 984.81 billion - and this debt is continuing to rise at a rapid rate.

Philip Shaw, an economist at Investec, said: "All in all, the picture is that household borrowing is rising in the region of 11 billion a month, an annual rate approaching 15 per cent. That clearly is too fast for the Bank of England."

April also saw mortgage lending rise by a record 9.8 billion, increasing the chance that the Monetary Policy Committee will raise interest rates again.

Total mortgage lending remained strong at 25.39 billion, although the value of loans approved weakened slightly to 26.11 billion and the number of loans approved for house purchase fell to 124,000 - both below the recent three-month average.

April also saw a new high with borrowing through loans, credit cards and overdrafts reaching 18.07 billion.