Violent loan sharks circle as UK families are pushed into debt
It started with Christmas. Sarah* was behind on rent and her money wouldn’t stretch, but she didn’t want her children to miss out. She turned to a local lender – “a friend of a friend” – and borrowed £700. She would repay £1,200 in total, broken down into £200-a-month chunks. The interest was steep but with a bad credit score and no relatives she could turn to, she didn’t have many options.
“I was desperate,” Sarah, 39, said. “Everything had piled up – rent, bills – and we were living hand to mouth. It was leading up to Christmas and I just knew I couldn’t do it.”
At first it went smoothly: the lender would come to her house and collect his £200 each month, scraped together from Sarah’s job in hospitality and universal credit. But when the third repayment was due, he turned. The lender was with two men she hadn’t met before and was demanding all the money. “I said, ‘I can’t pay that. We’ll have nothing left’,” she said. “But he said, ‘That’s not my fucking problem. Do you think I care?’ My heart was on the floor. I didn’t know what to do.”
The mother of four is one of thousands across the UK turning to loan sharks – illegal lenders who offer informal loans without paperwork, often at high interest rates. In some cases, they use threats and coercion to get their money back, sending harassing texts, taking bank cards to intercept benefit payments or visiting late at night to demand cash on the spot.
Events often turn violent. When Sarah said she couldn’t pay, she was attacked on her doorstep in front of her children. “He started getting aggressive,” she said. “I knew I couldn’t fight him; I had no chance. I ended up screaming, ‘OK, OK’.”
She managed to pay the debt — raised to £2,000 due to the “delays” – after handing over her
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