Recent data published by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) suggests that 7.8 million people across the UK are finding it increasingly more challenging to keep up with their household bills, a rise of around 2.5 million since 2020. The research shows that one in four UK adults are in financial difficulty or believe they could quickly find themselves in difficulty if an unexpected cash emergency popped up.
On top of this, the latest statistics from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), four million children now live in households where someone is claiming Universal Credit, half a million more than this time last year.
This, combined with the continued ripple effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the looming recession, plus multiple other financial factors, has resulted in us living in an era of poly-crises, said Dr Gordon Fletcher, Lecturer in Operations and Information Management, University of Salford Business School.
