One in three households do not have enough in their savings accounts to pay for emergency expenses, putting them at risk of falling into debt. This is up from one in four households just 18 months ago.

The level of cash held in a rainy day account to cover emergencies – the equivalent of three months’ worth of essential expenses – varies depending on counties and regions across England, Scotland and Wales, according to wealth manager Hargreaves Lansdown’s Savings and Resilience Barometer.

The areas with the lowest proportion of savers who have enough cash to cover emergencies were southern Scotland with 48% of households sufficiently protected, Merseyside, with 51% saying they have enough cash (down from 68% of people 18 months earlier), and Tees Valley, Durham and South Yorkshire all at 55%.

Inner and outer London were the areas with the highest proportion of savers with three months’ of essential expenses tucked away in a rainy day account, at 84% and 81% respectively.

Some 75% of households in Kent and Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and the Bath/Bristol area also had sufficient savings to pay for emergencies.

‘Savings have been savaged’

Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Our savings have been savaged over the past 18 months, as runaway price rises have flattened our financial resilience. We’ve been spending our way through any cash we were able to set aside during lockdowns, and we’ve eaten into the money we set aside for dire emergencies too. It has hit those on lower incomes hardest, and laid waste to savings in northern England and southern Scotland in particular. In some areas, only around half of people have enough savings to protect them from the unexpected.

“Lockdown savings are protecting millions of people from running into a brick wall financially. However, those who weren’t able to save anything during the pandemic have nothing to fall back on, and face a serious risk of building impossible debts.”

North / south divide and parent cash trap

But she added it is too simplistic to claim that we are seeing a north/south divide. Areas in Scotland make up of fifth of the savings hotspots analysed by Hargreaves Lansdown while Devon, Essex and West Wales rank among those areas with the least amount of savings.

“The real divide is between people at different income levels,” explained Coles, “with 28% of the lowest fifth of earners holding enough emergency savings and 92% of the highest fifth of earners.

“However, other factors have a huge impact too. Parenthood is horribly expensive, which is why single parents have such low levels of savings resilience – just 24% have enough savings. For those on lower incomes with children, it’s a double whammy: only 15% of parents on the fifth lowest incomes have enough savings.”

The majority of higher earners still have a cash safety net, along with 89% of those who own their home outright and 79% of couples with no children.

But Coles added that if you are in this position “you cannot afford to take it for granted”.

She urged savers not to leave their cash in a high street current account that pays little to no interest when easy access savings rates have reached around 4.5%.

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