Buy Now, Pay Later and Accessible Homes

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello. Welcome to this first Moneybox podcast of our new season. Very little new housing is fully accessible to people in wheelchairs. A new analysis says improving that could save the economy millions of pounds.

There's families living in houses that don't meet their needs, so then they're unable to then go out and work and things like that. How safe is your pension? The government's consulting on allowing firms with salary-related pension schemes to take money out of them. And the holidays are officially over as the revenue puts away its sunscreen and reopens its self-assessment helpline after its 12-week summer break.

But first, new research has found that one in five people are paying for essentials like food and household bills by borrowing on buy now, pay later. That's interest-free, but not always problem-free. The Money and Pension Service says more than 10 million people now use Buy Now Pay Later and says around four out of ten people it surveyed were struggling with repayments and making them from savings or indeed by borrowing on credit cards or...

Our reporter Sarah Rogers went to Rochdale Town Centre where she spoke to people on their lunch break at Francesca's Food Truck to find out how people there are using Buy Now, Pay Later. We kind of see it we've run this business for a long time now So we've got like a little nice community here So we even do like buy now pay later on here sometimes like people do yeah Yeah, we'll say like oh if you can't afford it today like pay us tomorrow whenever you get paid

and stuff. What are you using it for at the minute? Well, it's my birthday on Tuesday, so... Happy birthday for Tuesday! Yeah, so like for example, I bought an outfit, see ya, I bought an outfit for this weekend for when I go out, so... Little expenses like that. Can I two coffees please? Give me 40p when he comes down. So you come and see Francesca at the van every day? Every day. And if you're a little bit short? They always let us off.

Oh, we've got a bit of an audience now. Do you know much about, or are you using buy now, pay later? Yeah, it just helps with, so you don't have to go into your budget money. What kind of stuff do you buy on it? clothes but they've grown out they're old ones so i've had to replace it and you can't pay outright for them so you're just in a rut then do you feel like that that you're in a rut yeah because it's paying but then you're in the same situation over and over again

Yeah, I've used it quite a few times. I prefer to buy bits for kids and stuff. Are you worried about debt or do you think our attitudes have changed to debt? I'm a slight worry about debt because I'm in debt myself. I had one last year. I went to see Dran Dran at the AO Arena in April. I did buy and buy no pair later and it worked out brilliant because I don't go above and beyond of what I can afford. Okay, thank you. Enjoy your lunches.

Sarah Rogers there talking to people in Rochdale. With us is Lily Aaron, Senior Policy Manager at the Money and Pension Service. That's jointly funded by a grant from the Department for Work and Pensions and a levy on the finance industry. Lily Aaron, one in... five people using buy now pay later to pay for essentials is that a sensible way to manage those expenses well

It's worth saying that it can be a useful short-term credit option if it's the right option for you. But as you say, we did see in the report that one in five saying that they were using it for essentials and then half as many again saying that they might use it for essentials in the future. And this is important because... It marks a shift from people buying items that they might have otherwise returned, like retail items, and therefore maybe not end up paying for.

To people using buy now, pay later for items that by their very necessity are necessary, like bills and food that you need to pay for at a future date. So the message is really important to consider when you're using it, how you're going to pay later and whether you will be able to pay that off.

Yes, I mean, we heard from Rochdale. Some do use it well and think it's brilliant. But there was that woman who told us she was in a rut. And what she said was, it's paying, but then you're in the same situation over and over again. And that's the danger, isn't it?

It's really important that you don't start to feel like what was supposed to be the short-term credit option becomes a longer-term debt problem and the nature of buy now pay later is that you're spreading or deferring that cost so you're going to see that recurring impact on your monthly budget or that delayed impact on your monthly budget but it's really worth noting that if you

are having problems with those payments or struggling with your debts you are not alone and there's people you can speak to and you can go over to moneyhelper.org.uk where you can find our debt advice located tool to someone to help you plan Indeed, because that's a big part of your work, I know. Now, the borrowing is interest-free, as I said, but if you miss a payment, there are usually penalty charges, aren't there? So it's not free borrowing for everybody, is it?

No, and sometimes these charges can be comparatively more expensive than other forms of borrowing. And as you say, that approach to late fees or penalty charges can vary greatly across the industry. So it's more important than ever just to make sure that if you are using Buy Now Pay Later, you're reading those terms.

and you understand what you could be on the hook for if you do miss that payment. Yes, and you also found some people were using savings or even other forms of credit to pay off a buy now, pay later loan. Does that store up problems for the future? Well, as you say, the study found that 38% of users had used a management tactic.

for their commitments that could result in additional risk to their sort of onward financial well-being. And there could be knock-on impacts on their mental health. We had figures that showed that too. Some providers will allow you to use your credit card, but what I would say is that ideally... you should be thinking about whether you're available to pay for that buy now, pay later agreement when you're taking it out rather than deferring it further.

Yes, and there are some economists at the Bank of England who publish an unofficial blog. It said the average amount outstanding was £866. If that's right, that's a big commitment to repay that over two or three months, isn't it? Yes, there's some large...

Balance is doing the rounds. I think the thing to remember as well is that while those individual agreements might look small, those amounts can stack up quite quickly. Our study found that 60% of borrowers, or three in five, had multiple buy now, pay later agreements outstanding.

You should just remain vigilant about how many lines of credit you're taking out. Having lots of agreements with multiple deadlines and multiple amounts is going to make it harder for you to keep on top of what you owe. Yes, indeed. And, you know, the Bank of England says we're borrowing more on credit cards. And I mentioned using credit cards to pay off a buy now, pay later loan, you know, 67 billion pounds outstanding. And using a credit card can be an expensive way to pay off what.

potentially is an interest free loan. Yeah, and recent figures do suggest that the cost of borrowing is increasing. I think overall both forms of borrowing can be a useful tool to help people manage lumpy expenditure, as was shown in the Vox Pops.

if it's used correctly and if it's right for you, it's really crucial to think about whether you can afford it and whether you're realistically going to be able to pay when those instalments come due. Yes, you've given us some useful tips. One more, one final tip, Lily.

I think the most important thing that people can remember is just to, it might be the default at checkout, but consider it as you would any other credit arrangement. Consider whether it's right for you and set reminders. Because it is borrowing. Lily Aaron from Money and Pension Service.

thanks and Wednesday's Moneybox Live with its new presenter Felicity Hanna is all about credit and debt. Do you have a debt hangover from your summer holidays? Do you want to improve your credit rating or does debt keep you awake at night? Email your questions and comments to And do leave a phone number if you can.

Now, millions of pounds could be saved every year by building more homes that are accessible to people in wheelchairs. That's the conclusion of a report by the London School of Economics and a housing association called Habintech. It looked at the financial costs... benefits of building more accessible homes for people who need them. And it's a lot of people. The number of wheelchair users living in unsuitable homes across the UK is estimated to be more than 400,000.

I'll talk to a director at Habin Teg in a moment, but first Moneybox's Dan Whitworth has been to Kenilworth in Warwickshire to meet Georgia and her family for a tour of their partly accessible home. Hello. Who are you? Leo. Hello, Leo. I'm Daniel. How are you doing? Good. What a welcome party. I'm Georgia Tallis.

I'm 41 and I'm from Kenneweth. So I've had SMA, which is spinal muscular atrophy, type 2, since I was born, which means I've got a muscle weakness. All of my limbs really are quite weak and I can't walk. and I need to use a wheelchair to get around. Just talk me through this. I mean, this isn't what people might think of as a wheelchair. This looks quite a bit of high-tech kit. So it's a power chair, which I control with a joystick, but it also has loads of special features, so it...

tilts back so I can relax in it it goes up and down so I can reach higher shelves not as tall as a standing up person but you know it helps a little bit okay so we're in the lounge and it's just a normal lounge really there's no special accessible features in here and then we go through to the hall got a bit of help from leo there as well and my doorways are not widened so that's my luckily my power chair

is quite narrow. I was going to say that was a tight squeeze because that's not an accessible door, I suppose. It's not a widened door. No, it's not widened, no. So we're in the hall now and it goes out to the front door which has a ramp already. So there was already a ramp here when we moved in. What else is accessible in here? In the wet room, so the bathroom is a fully...

Talk me through the kind of help, and I suppose the financial help, that you get from your local authority. So I get direct payments from the local authority, which pays for a package of care, which I then employ those people privately.

And they help me with getting up in the morning, getting into the shower, transferring back into my wheelchair and getting dressed and everything like that. And then in the evenings, they come back in and help again with the same kind of things, really getting into bed. And then we have one sleepover, so we have a third bedroom for a carer who sleeps over. So, Georgia, I've got this report here, and some of the things...

that the report talks about in terms of financial savings. If wheelchair users are living in fully accessible homes, for example, one of the points here they make, remove or reduce the cost of care assistance in the home. Another one, for example, Reduction in the delay of hospital discharges, a reduction in trips and falls at home, delaying the need for permanent residential care. I definitely think that's true and I think...

Although not all of it applies to me, I can definitely see that it definitely applies to other people. I mean, we're lucky in a way because although our house isn't 100% wheelchair accessible, it kind of ticks quite a lot of boxes for us, whereas some people are living in houses that tick.

hardly any boxes for them and they're you know living in awful conditions what kind of difference would a fully accessible home make to you do you think emotionally financially emotionally i think like coming home and not having all those barriers that you have when you're out and about in public To have those challenges and emotional... Sorry. No, no, go on. To have those challenges inside your home is tough. Yeah. Yeah, so I think it would really get you down, I think, if you had...

lots of obstacles within your home as well as when you go out and about you know there's families living in houses that don't meet their needs so then they're unable to then like you said go out and work and things like that so because they can't can't even get up and get washed in the morning and things like that

Georgia Tallis and Leo talking to Dan Whitworth. With me is Christina McGill, the director at Habinteg Housing Association. That's a charity that specialises in building and renting accessible homes. Christina McGill, your report says the overall financial benefit of ensuring a working-age wheelchair user like Georgia has an accessible home could actually save the country £94,000 over 10 years. How do you get to those numbers?

The report that the London School of Economics have put together for Habentech did some really useful analysis looking at the likelihood of those different factors applying to different types of households. So as Georgia explained there in the package, not every benefit applies. to every person but we know that for example a reduction in those hours needed to support somebody in their own home 23 pounds an hour on average if a relatively modest care package

Four and a half, five hours a week, ranked up over the course of a year or ten years, amounts to a lot of money. So being able to reduce those things for some households brings us to those kinds of figures. Yes, and of course reducing the need for residential care. It's very expensive. But tell me about the individuals like Georgia. How does wheelchair accessibility affect an individual wheelchair user's finances? I think the most powerful...

example on that is really the likelihood of being able to work. Other work that the LSE have done previously indicated that wheelchair users who have their needs met at home are four times more likely to be able to access the employment market.

And that obviously has a profound impact not only on their individual personal finances and the money coming into the home, disposable income, but also in the contribution that they're making to the economy through tax and national insurance. Yes, you can see how it adds up, can't you? Now, that's the finance, but... As Georgia said, and she put it very well, I thought, it's bad enough finding obstacles to wheelchairs when you're out and about. You shouldn't have to put up with them at home.

Getting it right must affect their quality of life immensely. It's really, really important to think about the real-life situations that people are in behind these figures. I've talked to people who have spoken about the impact that accessibility has on their ability to...

parent their children, being able to access their children's bedrooms for the bedtime story, people being able to be the person who makes the Sunday roast and because their kitchen is fully accessible to their requirements, being able to get out into their back garden. learned through lockdown didn't we how important that access to outdoor space is so those simple things that so many of us take for granted at home have the power to really affect somebody's well-being and their independence

Yes. Now, one thing you're calling for is for all homes to be a better standard of wheelchair accessibility. And of course, some listeners might say, well, this is going to cost more, bigger doorways and so on. Why should everyone pay so that a minority, albeit a big one, can find life easier?

What we're calling for in terms of all new homes is for them to be more accessible, but crucially, more adaptable for everybody. Now, this makes them a really good inclusive standard. It would benefit you and I if we were trying to maybe bring in a new sofa into our home or...

If I had somebody visiting who was coming in with a pram or a buggy, they're going to be much more easily able to get into my property and just socialise with me. So that's an inclusive standard, but it's also really adaptable should the needs of a household change over time.

Obviously, houses have a number of households over the course of their lifetime. So it's about the lifetime of the household and of the house itself as well to be adaptable to changing needs. Yes. And you mentioned one of the things you want. What are a couple of key things you hope will actually happen as a result of this report?

Well, the first thing we'd really love is for all local planning authorities who really have the job of deciding how many wheelchair accessible properties need to be built in their area. We want them to read the report, think about the analysis that the LSE have done and use that to really make the case. for setting a target in their local area. And we want that also to be much more strongly emphasised by government.

key guidance that they give and we want them to be much firmer with local authorities about the expectation that there should be wheelchair accessible properties in every plan. So lots of things for people to do. Christina McGill from HabinTech Housing Association, thanks very much. Thank you.

Well, the long summer holiday is over for HMRC's self-assessment tax helpline anyway. It's been away building sandcastles, possibly in the air, since June 12th. It reopens on Monday after its 12-week... break. Sandra Hardyles here. Sandra, the self-assessment deadline is January 31st, so there's still plenty of time for people to get their questions answered, isn't there?

Not really, Paul. Two groups may need answers very soon. Nearly half a million people submitted a paper form last year, and they must be filed by the 31st of October, or else there's a fine of £100. HMRC wants them all to move to online filing, so if they want to find out more about that change, they need to get their questions answered soon in case they decide to stick with paper. And so that's less than two months to get their problems sorted. And you mentioned a second group. Yes.

People who started a new small business or side hustle as a sole trader in the last tax year, that's 2022 to 23, must register for self-assessment by the 5th of October if their turnover was more than £1,000. So they've only got a very few weeks to do that. And if they have questions, they need them answered quickly. Thanks, Sandra. And the helpline will be taking down the gone away for the summer sign and raising its blinds at eight o'clock on Monday morning.

0300 200 3310 0300 200 3310 The government is considering ways to relax rules for employers that have one of those older pension schemes which give a salary-related pension. It asks should the trustees who run them take more risk and invest more money in key UK assets. And one idea to encourage that is to remove some of the restrictions on employers from accessing any surplus funds that might...

build up in their pension schemes. Currently, that's very difficult, if not impossible, for them to do. But we've been contacted by listeners worried about what such a change might mean. There's no such thing as a surplus. It's there to protect against the next financial crash. I don't understand this. We all remember raids on pension schemes. What about Maxwell's shenanigans with his employees' pensions?

What is it really about? Will companies have to make good any deficits in full and immediately as a quid pro quo? There's no such thing as a surplus in a pension fund. What is supposed to happen is that any extra money accrued stays in the pension fund to help pay future pensions. It belongs to those workers who have paid in, no one else.

Just some of the tweets I got about this story when it appeared in newspapers last week. They were read by members of the Moneybox team. Joining us now is Tom Selby. He's head of retirement policy at the investment platform, A.J. Bell. Tom Selby, the almost universal...

reaction there and we had over 500 replies was skeptical about the sense of such a change people worried that you know, firms that take out surpluses now and then leave a deficit in future. Is that a reasonable concern? I think it's understandable, Paul. I think pensions have a bit of a chequered history. One of the tweeters there mentioned Robert Maxwell.

You can think of Equitable Life and British Steel more recently as well. I think the key thing for defined benefit scheme members to do at the moment is not to panic, not to overly worry. There are no actual... proposals on the table here we've got a call for evidence from the department for work and pensions they haven't actually proposed anything yet and they have said in that call for evidence that they'll make sure that

there is appropriate security of benefits that will be maintained. Now, what appropriate security of benefits means, maybe we'll find that out in the fullness of time. Yes, appropriate can do a lot of things, can't it? And as you say, some of the tweets were harking back to the bad old days, like you mentioned Robert Maxwell, who stole...

£460 million from the Mirror Group pension fund in the 1980s and led to a lot of the controls we've got now. The Pension and Lifetime Savings Association, of course, that represents these pension schemes, says concerns that it could lead to a scandal like that were overdone. Do you think that's right? Yes, I think that is right. It's important to remember we're comparing here a call for evidence on what would be presumably some quite tightly controlled...

proposals for employers to access a surplus versus somebody who illegally and fraudulently took money out of a pension scheme. So I can understand the... I can understand the concern, but you would hope and assume that a government, if it were going to bring in any flexibility around this area, would make sure it was appropriately regulated and controlled. Yes, but other people remember contribution holidays now.

That was something under the former Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, and he said the Divers scheme had assets of more than 105% of what it needs. That's a surplus. So firms took contribution holidays, didn't pay in anything, sometimes for years. left them in a deficit. So is it possible that actuaries get these sums wrong? You know they say it's a surplus but then the economy changes and suddenly it's a deficit. Yes so pension scheme funding is based on lots of factors.

that are quite sensitive so they're quite sensitive for example to movements in guilt yields they're quite sensitive that's government government bonds yes yes that's right so the liability side of the equation is that so that's how long the scheme thinks its members are going to live for is quite sensitive to guilt yields. It's also quite sensitive to changes in life expectancy. In fact,

Recently, we've seen substantial reductions in the assumptions on future increases in life expectancy. So actuaries play an incredibly... important role in particularly in defined benefit schemes but at a fundamental level and I don't mean to besmirch the actuarial industry here but it's it's a guessing game you're guessing how long people are going to live for based on various factors that you know and some factors that you don't

know yes professional assessment they might prefer to call it and people have said among those tweets people said well this isn't the firm's money it's our money and it should be used to enhance benefits if anything Yes, and I could also understand the concern depending on how any...

proposals were brought forward. There's a risk here that if a company were allowed to raid the cookie jar and just take money out of the pension scheme, one of the reasons that schemes have built up surpluses is because... guilt yields have moved in a way that's been favourable to their finances over a very short period of time. But we've seen over the past year, of course, that guilt yields can move up.

very quickly and they could also move down very quickly as well and so if you took money out and then guilt yields moved in the wrong way then you might end up in a situation where actually schemes are back in significant deficits as we've seen over the last decade or so. And that's the big concern. Tom Selby of AJ Bell, thanks very much indeed.

Well, there's never a surplus of time on the Moneybox podcast. It often feels more like a deficit as we squeeze in as much as we can into our allotted minutes. Just time to add, though, that national savings and investments hit the top of the best buy tables. In the week, the programme was broadcast with its guaranteed growth and guaranteed income bonds. If you can tie your money up for a year and invest online, you can earn 6.2% on sums from £500 to £1 million in each with no risk.

We go out live at midday on Saturdays and you can, of course, never miss an episode by subscribing on BBC Sounds and listening at your leisure. If you do, you'll also get Moneybox Live broadcast on Wednesdays with Felicity Hanna, who takes a close... look at one topic. As I said, next up is debt and credit. Catch it live or catch up on BBC Sounds.

Listeners feature in every podcast how you might wonder. Well, they email us with their money problems and indeed their solutions. Moneybox at bbc.co.uk. We do read them all and it could be you next week. In this podcast, the reporters were Dan Whitworth and Sarah Rogers, the researcher Sandra Hardiel, the studio manager Natalie Ladderley, our editor is Jess Quayle, I'm Paul Lewis and this was a BBC News Money and Work production for BBC Sound.

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With dealers, critics and someone who once worked deep inside Banksy's secret team. Do you wish you didn't know anyone? Sometimes I wish I'd never heard of Banksy. The Banksy Story, with me, James Peake, on Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds. How does this smell? I paint. When Vivint Smart Security gives you a smarter way to protect and its smart thermostats give you a smarter way to save... Well, that's a smarter way to live. Get the smarter home system that just gets you