Don't do it Graham!

It may be something he won't be proud to tell his viewers about, but TV and radio personality Graham Norton, pictured, could find himself presenting an award to lenders charging over 1,000% interest this week.

The Irish comedian is due to host Credit Today magazine's annual awards ceremony at London's prestigious Grosvenor Hotel, Park Lane on Thursday night. But some of the lenders that he could be shaking hands with include extortionate home credit providers Bristol Finance and Credit Services Ltd, which charges £40 interest on a £100 loan given over just 14 weeks. That's a whopper of a rip off Graham - an APR of 1068.5%!

The Home Credit or door to door lending market was recently found by the Competition Commission inquiry to be making excessive profits amounting to over £75 million per year. A range of measures are due to be implemented next year to address this, but in the meantime lenders like Bristol Finance and Credit are able to continue to rip off low income customers.

Other lenders up for an award in the category of 'Home Credit Lender of the Year' (we kid you not!), include Shoppacheck, the subject of previous TV undercover reporting, and last year's winner SD Taylor -a subsidiary of S&U plc in which ex-Tory M.P Derek Coombs, holds a £30 million stake.

If you think Graham is doing the wrong thing by presenting an award to these lenders, then contact him via his website (www.grahamnorton.net)- and let him know what you think.

Personal Insolvencies Rise Again

The first quarter of 2007 saw 30,075 people go bust, an increase in personal insolvencies of 23.9% on the same period one year ago, according to figures released today by the Insolvency Service. Whilst bankruptcies rose 10% to 16,842, Individual Voluntary Arrangements accelerated by 47.6% over the past 12 months to 13,233.

Commenting on the figures, Damon Gibbons - Chair of Debt on our Doorstep - said:

"That over 30,000 households in a single three month period have had to resort to extreme measures and declare themselves insolvent reflects a severe indebtedness problem in this country. We should remember that every county court judgment, insolvency, and respossession increases the market for high cost credit as people are excluded from mainstream financial services. The challenge for Government is to ensure that people going insolvent are given a way back into the financial services mainstream as soon as possible. In that respect, the growth of IVA's as opposed to full bankruptcy is perhaps the only good news in these figures."