Current Research Programmes
Building Financially Healthy Lives and Communities
Our Projects
We want to ensure that all British households lead financially healthy lives. This requires us to think about how they can be assisted to meet their day to day costs and also build up savings and plan positively for their future. We know that too many households are struggling financially, and that these are often geographically concentrated. Even with very careful money management, the combination of low pay, insecure [...]
Getting Britain Out of Debt
Our Projects
We believe that over-indebtedness is receiving insufficient policy attention. Not only does it have major human and social costs, but the debt burden is negatively impacting on our economic performance. The extent to which debt poses a burden on households is contingent on three factors: (i) the amount of debt that is outstanding; (ii) the cost of that debt, in terms of interest, fees and minimum payment [...]
Improving Credit Regulation
Our Projects
Inadequate regulation of credit markets has created all three of the major economic crises experienced in Britain since 1970. The removal of direct Government controls over lending and the replacement of these with the 'Competition and Control' system of regulation in 1971 lay behind the Heath Government's 'dash to growth'. It relied on credit markets being controlled only through the manipulation of interest rates by the Bank of England, [...]
Latest News
Politics needs to address Britain’s emerging consumer debt crisis
This briefing draws upon the latest data from the UK Economic Accounts released by the Office for National Statistics on 31st March 2017 (covering the period up to December 2016) and from the Bank of England’s NMG Consulting survey[1] (‘the NMG survey’) to provide information about the level and distribution of the household consumer credit debt burden. It provides evidence that the consumer debt repayments [...]
Fair for You makes the case for a massive expansion of affordable credit
A new CfRC report highlights the huge social benefits that could be achieved if Government were to widen the access to affordable, not for profit, alternatives to high cost credit. The report is based on research involving more than 1,000 low income customers of Fair for You – a new national, not for profit alternative to the high cost rent-to-own stores and door-to-door moneylenders. It [...]
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Follow us on TwitterCfRC Annual Conference: Building a Financially Healthy Society
28th February 2017
Prices frozen at £99 plus VAT, some full bursaries available
2017 is set to be a critical year. The Financial Conduct Authority is consulting on its approach to credit regulation, including whether or not to extend the scope of the total cost cap from payday loans to other areas of the market…Government is considering the arrangements for the successor body to the Money Advice Service…there is rapid technological change within the financial services industry itself… and households are facing a further squeeze on incomes.
It has never been more important for stakeholders to come together and discuss how we can ensure that regulation, debt advice and insolvency procedures, and financial health programmes can be improved to better meet the needs of British households and contribute to sustainable economic growth.
Check out the latest information about the conference, including confirmed sessions and speakers here.
To ensure that as many people as possible can attend, we have frozen our delegate fees at £99 plus VAT and also have some full bursaries available. To book your place, please visits the Learning and Work website here. If you would like to enquire about a free place, please contact Damon.Gibbons@responsible-credit.org.uk
Britain in the Red | Final Report
August 2016
We have now published our final report for the TUC and Unison commissioned ‘Britain in the Red’ project. This has been analysing aggregate and household survey data to assess the impact of the rising consumer credit debt burden for households in recent years. The report indicates that approximately £25 billion in consumer credit interest payments are being made by households each year, which is equivalent to 1.4% of GDP, and that 3.2 million households are over-indebted (paying out more than 25% of their gross income to their creditors). Our current debt advice and insolvency system is not an adequate response to this level of household indebtedness and urgently needs to be reviewed.
Latest posts
Politics needs to address Britain’s emerging consumer debt crisis
This briefing draws upon the latest data from the UK Economic Accounts released by the Office for National Statistics on 31st March 2017 (covering the period up to December 2016) and from the Bank of [...]
Fair for You makes the case for a massive expansion of affordable credit
A new CfRC report highlights the huge social benefits that could be achieved if Government were to widen the access to affordable, not for profit, alternatives to high cost credit. The report is based on [...]
The closure of BrightHouse stores is good news but we need to alert people to the Fair for You alternative
The largest rent-to own company in the UK, BrightHouse, has recently announced that it is set to close a number of its stores, as it struggles to cope with increased regulatory scrutiny of its business [...]
BRITAIN’S PERSONAL DEBT CRISIS | How we got here and what to do about it.
Damon Gibbons | 1 Jul 2014
In Britain’s Personal Debt Crisis, CfRC Director Damon Gibbons, provides an assessment of how, over a period of 40 years, we have come to be over-reliant on financial services, and credit in particular. Our basic needs – for affordable homes, for education, decent jobs, and dignity in old age – are all now contingent on our ability to access financial services. But the way in which these are provided is highly regressive and is contributing to growing wealth inequality. Credit expansion has also contributed to our economic decline, paved the way for attacks on the welfare state, and fed the growth of a highly individualistic and unsustainable consumer culture.
Whilst charting these developments, the book also outlines a programme for national renewal, including measures to bring credit back under control and restore the financial sector to servants of government economic policy.
“Damon’s book provides a timely insight into the power of personal debt to not just make life a daily struggle of the public but do long term damage to the future our country. He matches detailed analysis with a passionate call for action that many will find compelling”
Stella Creasy MP
”Damon Gibbons has campaigned over many years for fair lending at a reasonable price to low income households. From doorstep lending to payday loans he has challenged established ideas and called for a cap on costs – a policy now endorsed by the Government.”
Paul Lewis, journalist and broadcaster
Damon is one of those rare people who is able to combine a social policy researchers’ attention to detail with a campaigners’ zeal and passion to make change happen. The fact that he has managed to sustain this work for more than a decade, even when it has often meant swimming against the prevailing opinion of the times, is remarkable. Not only that, his analysis of the problems and solutions to Britain’s personal debt crisis is always insightful, and almost always right!”
Niall Cooper, Director, Church Action on Poverty
”This is a timely analysis of the growth in personal debt and a passionate plea for action. Few people understand the working of credit markets better than Damon and his proposals for effective regulation deserve serious attention.”
Paul Blomfield MP