'I was offered £1.7m in credit'

A MAN was offered £1.7m in loans and credit in the space of one year. A hundred unsolicited letters from banks, building societies and finance firms dropped through Bill Proctor's letterbox.

In one case, a specialist loans firm invited him to borrow no less than £500,000.

Proctor (pictured below) has revealed the level of junk mail he was sent in an attempt to highlight how easy it has become to get credit in the UK.

Proctor, a 49-year-old trading standards officer from Kendal, Cumbria, received more than 350 unsolicited letters last year, of which 100 offered either loans or credit cards.

Three of his colleagues were sent more than 200 offers of credit or loans totalling in excess of £1.6m. They monitored their mail as part of an investigation into junk mail by Cumbria County Council's trading standards department.

Pat Thomas, who led the study, said: 'The availability of money is very worrying. All these invitations to take out loans and credit are all right for people who can handle their money, but there is a significant proportion of people who can't and who get themselves deeper and deeper into debt.

'If they were to take up even a fraction of what they are being offered, they would get into real trouble.'

Thomas started the survey after becoming concerned by the number of letters sent to him and his schoolteacher wife Barbara, offering easy finance.

A year later, he and three colleagues had collected more than a thousand pieces of junk mail, a third of which advertised credit cards or loans.

Proctor was offered a total of £1.27m in loans and 21 credit cards with a combined limit of £409,000.

Another colleague had letters offering £150,000 in credit and loans to her two daughters, aged six and nine, even though offering credit to children is illegal.

'I've no doubt these figures are typical of households across the country,' Thomas said. 'If anything, they are understated because not only could some letters have simply slipped the net, many didn't offer specific amounts.'

Finance experts agreed banks and building societies had made it far too easy to get credit.

David Elms, chief executive of IFA Promotions, an industry body set up to champion independent financial advice, said budgeting appeared to have become a lost art.

'People used to talk about thrift,' he said. 'They tend not to use that term any more. It is very worrying.

'We are seeing an increase in the number of offers of cheap and easy credit dropping through our doors and, unfortunately, too many of us are ready to take on to buy luxuries. Somewhere down the line, this has to be repaid.'

Last year, credit card issuers alone spent £260m on advertising through junk mail. Bombarded with adverts and letters, Britons plunged into credit card debt far faster than any of our European neighbours.

A report from market research analysts Mintel this month showed we accounted for almost three-quarters of the £165b spent on credit in 15 European countries last year.

Earlier this month, the Daily Mail revealed how a young father hanged himself to escape debts of £70,000 after becoming swamped by easy credit.

Stephen Lewis, 37, earned £22,000 a year and lived a modest life with his wife, Susan, and two children Megan, 11, and Kurt, eight, in Worksop, Nottinghamshire.

He was allowed to take out 19 credit cards, running up around £50,000 of debt in interest, bank charges and insurance plans alone.

In the month before his death last July, the minimum repayments demanded by the banks totalled more than £5,000.

This week, details emerged of a woman of 84, Kate Purnell, who amassed debts of £30,000 on 20 cards, despite her only income being a £76-a-week pension.