Historical timeline
UK debt over the long run. Switch the measure and the period; every point is also listed in the table below.
Event markers
- Post-Napoleonic debt peak: After two decades of war (ending at Waterloo in 1815), government debt peaked at around 200% of GDP, among the highest ratios in British history, surpassed only after the Second World War.
- First World War ends: Borrowing to fund the war pushed debt sharply higher, and it stayed high for decades afterwards.
- Second World War ends: Debt peaked at well over 200% of GDP. It then fell over several decades as the economy grew.
- 1976 IMF loan: Facing a sterling crisis, the UK borrowed from the International Monetary Fund.
- Global financial crisis: A banking crisis and recession raised borrowing and debt as tax revenue fell and support measures were funded.
- COVID-19 pandemic: Emergency support for households and businesses, alongside a fall in the economy, pushed borrowing to peacetime records.
- Interest rates rise: Higher inflation and interest rates increased the cost of servicing debt, including index-linked gilts.
Show the data as a table
| Year | Debt (% GDP) | Debt (£ bn) | Borrowing (£ bn) | Interest (£ bn) | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1700 | 14 | n/a | n/a | n/a | estimated |
| 1750 | 99 | n/a | n/a | n/a | estimated |
| 1816 | 200 | n/a | n/a | n/a | estimated |
| 1850 | 102 | n/a | n/a | n/a | estimated |
| 1900 | 30 | n/a | n/a | n/a | estimated |
| 1918 | 109 | n/a | n/a | n/a | estimated |
| 1933 | 178 | n/a | n/a | n/a | estimated |
| 1945 | 251 | n/a | n/a | n/a | estimated |
| 1960 | 112 | n/a | n/a | n/a | estimated |
| 1970 | 64 | n/a | n/a | n/a | estimated |
| 1979 | 47 | 95 | 10 | 8 | estimated |
| 1990 | 27 | 180 | -5 | 17 | estimated |
| 2000 | 34 | 340 | -17 | 25 | estimated |
| 2008 | 36 | 530 | 40 | 31 | estimated |
| 2010 | 69 | 1,030 | 150 | 44 | estimated |
| 2015 | 81 | 1,600 | 80 | 45 | provisional |
| 2019 | 84 | 1,810 | 59 | 48 | provisional |
| 2020 | 96 | 2,160 | 311 | 39 | provisional |
| 2021 | 94 | 2,380 | 116 | 70 | provisional |
| 2022 | 93 | 2,540 | 124 | 110 | provisional |
| 2023 | 94 | 2,680 | 135 | 108 | provisional |
| 2024 | 93 | 2,810 | 150 | 105 | provisional |
| 2026 | 94 | 3,005 | 134 | 110 | provisional |
Source: Bank of England 'A millennium of macroeconomic data', ONS and OBR for recent years. Retrieved . estimated
About this series
Long-run series for the historical timeline. Pre-1900 values are best-estimate historical reconstructions and are necessarily approximate. Cash (£) figures are only meaningful for recent decades; debt-to-GDP is the comparable measure across the whole period. The latest (current-year) point is not stored here. It is taken from the dashboard data so there is a single source of truth for the current figure. Debt and borrowing from 2015 onwards were reconciled to the ONS annual alignment of September 2026, using series HF6W, HF6X and J5II, and are rounded to the nearest £10 billion. The 2000, 2008 and 2010 rows still differ from that series by far more than rounding (£140 billion to £260 billion), which points to a different measure rather than a revision, so they are left as they were until that is settled. The interest column is not from those series and stays on the basis the interest page uses.