In Britain, about 15 million people are collectively in debt to the huge some of over £30 billion in secured and unsecured loans and Citizen Advice Bureau has in the last one year been dealing with cases of those being unable to keep up debt repayments.

Debts have become so common that Britain is branded the home of easy access to credit, while people easily succumb to the temptation to always ask for more loans. At a point, studies found, people were borrowing from one lender to pay off another.

Although the credit crisis made lenders to toughen lending criteria, making it much more difficult to borrow from mainstream lenders, there were reports recently saying that rules were bent in certain cases.

Credit card companies were generally blamed for issuing up to 4.8 million cards to lenders without proper checking to know the capacity of the applicants to repay. Thus, credits worth over £17 billion were approved without following due process. This is regardless of the fact that only a year ago, due to the fact that consumers were allowed to take out more debt than they could manage, banks were forced to write off up to £17.3 billion in bad debts.

A couple of months back, in an emotionally charged comment, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams blamed Britain’s debt culture, millionaire banks and ministers for collectively contributing to straining the fabric of society.

He warned that the economy was built on increasingly uncontrolled credit, which was leading to the erosion of family life and self-confidence for many people. Noted for often being too frank and straight-to-the point, Dr Williams called on the government to impose tougher rules on lenders.

Since his comment, a lot has happened in the country and so much has been said or revealed about out debt culture. The recent revelation came from the Citizens Advice Bureau and it blamed lenders for the huge debts amassed by people in the UK who are now unable to repay.

Citing a number of cases, in a report, in which its bureaux across the country had dealt with, the advice agency said on many occasions people who had taken out loans from banks, whether secured or unsecured but found themselves in trouble with repayments, often discovered their lenders were unwilling to assist them.

In one case, for example, the CAB said a man who had taken out a secured loan for £85,000 including payment protection insurance (PPI) was not told the loan was a variable and the cost of PPI was extra £21,000 until he received the loan agreement.

Lest not forget that PPI was, itself, an issue of controversy leading to the intervention of the Competition Commission following instructions from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). And the Commission found that consumers were being ripped-off up to £1.4 billion a year. This is because, like the case cited above, people are not properly told the terms and conditions of the cover and how its works.

Just as the references in this article suggest, the CAB equally blamed accumulating debts in the country on bad marketing for lending which encourages irresponsible borrowing, lending without a prior check on borrowers history and ability to repay, sales of the wrong PPI to borrowers, offering consolidation loans, secured and unsecured, when borrowers face financial difficulties among other factors.

Rather than throwing loans at people who, out of desperation, would not reject, the onus is on lenders to encourage responsible borrowing. This should include knowing what loans suit their needs and the means of repayment.