British lenders are writing off over £38m of bad debts every day, according to a financial charity.

Credit Action, who help people in debt, calculated total UK personal debt at £1,455bn - an annual increase of 0.8%. This means individuals now owe more than what the whole country produces in a year.

UK banks and building societies wrote off £10.9bn of loans to individuals in the last 12 months to end Q2 2010 and in Q2 2010 they wrote off £3.47bn (£2.14bn of that was credit card debt).

Total consumer credit lending to individuals at the end of September 2010 was £216bn. The annual growth rate of consumer credit increased 0.3% to 0.6%.

Average household debt in the UK is £8,562 (excluding mortgages). This figure increases to £17,838 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 £57,737 (including mortgages).

If you add to this the March 2010 budget report figure for public sector net debt PSND) expected in 2015-16 (excluding financial interventions) then this figure rises to £109,960 per household.