know thy neighbour's strife - postcode searchable debt map

[MummyOW]

Spotted this on the Guardian, it's a new map showing debt levels in different areas which you can search by postcode.

www.payplan.com/ukdebtmap/

In the last month in my postcode area apparently 33 people have been "advised" with average debts of £56,703.42!

Looking at the map though, the postcode areas seem quite wide.

We live in an affluent 'sought after' area (renting) and I just put our postcode in there !!

74 debt plans, 76 iva, average debt £80,821.69

guess I'm right not being jealous of the big posh cars, boats etc... (goes off to polish my six year old fiat).

Does this include mortgages? Because if so I'd have thought that anyone with a mortgage would show as a huge debt. Otherwise I can't see how people in my area could have debts of £77,000 per person, no flash cars or yachts around here!

Has to include mortgages as in my area total of new debts is £24million!

I'm sure that includes mortgages and is also strangely voyeuristic!

Wow my area only includes 9 people, £600,000 debt. Not a wealthy area, but maybe people don't tend to overstretch themselves because of it?

It says secured and unsecured debt, so it should include mortgages.

I'm not clear on what information you really get from it - they colour code the tags on the map yet I dont see why one is colour coded green and another red, the numbers are given no context.

But what's it for? How does it materially help anyone or change anything to know that people with debt live in a particular area?

Wow, my post code has £46,358,838 of new debts, an average of 64K pp!

Average debt per person £105k in our area! Six million in new debts in a small town. Sort of doesn't surprise me. High house prices. But even so it's scary.

10 IVAs in the last month ....

30 new IVAs this month where my Mum lives in london

IVAs are the one step back from bankruptcy so show out of control debt ....

I'm in a not at all wealthy rural area and the average is £88K. I'm guessing the amount would include business debt as well as mortgage debt.

how many IVA's in the last month?

just that debt could be really, really high (eg in posh area) but fully affordable (bankers)
IVAs show where it has gone out of control

Well, I live in the Midlands and am shocked to see my postcode has an average debt of £98,176.93!

This does seem to cover the entire WS13 postcode though - rather than my specific bit. So most of a city. Property prices here are not that huge TBH, so would have expected lower.

New IVA's are 14.

I live in a very densely populated area (London) - 1155 people advised, average debt £58k. There are quite a few flaws with the data - I've sought help for debt advice and didn't go to Payplan, I went to Stepchange instead as they're a charity and don't make any charges. Also they only list IVAs/DMPs and I opted for bankruptcy - I think people on a lower income/no assets would choose this route as there would be no risk of losing their home if they don't own it.

TheSecondComing Fri 26-Jul-13 09:31:28
I don't believe it. Think it's an attempt to sell their own services by saying 'you are not alone' type messages.

This ^^^

IVAs are court orders .... if they show, they are real
the level of debt is a propert price red herring
the IVAs show the problem level (PS its on 1st half postcode only)

I put my postcode in and it pretty much covered all of Greater Manchester which is too wide an area for any meaningful statistics.

0 on all but for my area.