A new report from Fair4All Finance argues there has been a severe decline in the availability of credit for lower income households, and that we should consider "regulatory adjustments" to address it. In our response, we argue that there is little evidence of a 'credit vacuum' and that now is not the time to embolden high-cost lenders who are trying to roll back the regulatory clock.

In July, we reflected on new evidence looking at people’s experience of using illegal lenders. Today, we are publishing our secondary analysis of the FCA's Financial Lives Survey, 2020 highlighting how demographic factors and financial pressures combine to increase the risk of borrowing from loan sharks. We find that having borrowed from legal high-cost lenders in the past 12 months greatly increases this risk and call for direct measures to counter cost-of-living pressures as the means to counter it.

Debt advisers working in local Citizens Advice Bureaux and community-based independent advice agencies could soon be facing redundancy due to cuts in their grant funding from the Money and Pensions Service ('MaPS') and protests against the cuts will be taking place outside DWP, HM Treasury, and MaPS offices on Monday.