This article is the latest part of the FTs Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign
Mortgage borrowers may have breathed a sign of relief this week as interest rates appeared to reach their peak. But look beyond the headlines and a much nastier, harder-to-solve debt problem is lurking.
I am talking about the record 22bn UK households are now estimated to owe in unpaid essential bills including utilities, council tax, plus benefit and tax credit overpayments a ticking time bomb that Citizens Advice claims policymakers are failing to listen to.
A 34 per cent jump on pre-pandemic debt levels, a new paper entitled Countdown to a household debt disaster attempts to show the true scale of this hidden problem.
Incredibly, government and utili…
Read the full article at: https://www.ft.com/content/ef45c047-9c21-4e1f-8f3d-1b2026080cc4