Savings gulf opens up in UK

New research from Alliance & Leicester, released today, shows that Britons hold six times more in savings and investments than they do in debt.

Property was totted up as being worth £4.3 trillion, savings at £820 billion, with other assets including pensions totalling £1.8 trillion. Total borrowings came to £1.3 trillion.

This impressive ratio – gleaned from figures from the Bank of England, the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the government by the pollster YouGov – hides a financial gulf splitting the populace.

While richer households enjoy the property boom and the strong economy, lower income households are saving less as belts are tightened.

Evidence for this is found in savings figures: while the national average comes to £31,300, almost one third of households have no savings at all – pointing to a big split between the “haves” and the “have nots”.

Alliance and Leicester pointed out a general decrease in savings, with the bank’s head of savings and investments Ewan Edwards pointing out that on average just 2.1 per cent of disposable income is currently saved by Britons, when the figure averages out at 6 per cent over the last decade.

“Britons are increasingly losing the savings habit”, he concluded.

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