The proportion of personal-loan repayments that are at least 15 days late has risen from 8% to 11% since last May.
Repayments as a proportion of income were also rising, although they remained at 22.4%.
Base rates of 5% will create the same burden interest and mortgage repayments as a proportion of disposable income as base rates of 10% did a decade ago, says John Butler, an economist at HSBC, a bank.So much for the worries.
The proportion of households that had to make debt repayments of more than £40 a week had doubled and the average level of debt was £2,250.
These data were updated week by week according to the flow of repayments.
At the moment, the average mortgage repayment is a smaller proportion of income than the long-run average.
By taking out loans to pay for basics, many become ensnared in a debt trap, where credit repayments take up a larger proportion of household income, forcing families to cut back on essentials (and in some cases borrow even more).
Halifax's house prices-to-earning ratio has declined from a peak of 5.84 to 4.36 in May, a level last seen in January 2003, while the proportion of disposable income a buyer needs to meet typical mortgage repayments had fallen to 31% by the end of last year – below the average of 37% recorded over the past 25 years.
And, as the governor stressed, our predilection for floating-rate mortgages (or our banks' predilection for selling them to us), means that compared to the US, for example, a larger proportion of borrowers would see an immediate impact on their monthly repayments if base rates increased.
While some of these cases will be solved by negotiating a repayment plan with landlords, there will be a proportion of tenants who can't or won't pay rent and refuse to leave the property either.
