National finances
UK debt clock
Latest Office for National Statistics public sector net debt stock, plus a clearly labelled live estimate that interpolates forward using the average daily change between recent ONS monthly observations. Watchtower does not scrape novelty “debt clock” websites or invent a rate from thin air.
UK national debt (estimated live)
Estimate · ONS-interpolated
£2,984,900,000,000
£2984.90bn estimated · official stock £2984.90bn as of end of Jul 2026
- Implied rate
- −£319.35m/day−£3.7k/sec
- Last official stock
- £2984.90bnend of Jul 2026 · 31 Jul 2026
- Share of GDP
- 94.1%
- vs year earlier
- +£95.9bnONS release 21 Aug 2026
Methodology. The large figure is an estimate: it starts from the latest published ONS PSND ex stock and moves forward using the average daily change between the last two HF6W month-end observations (2026 JUN £2994.8bn → 2026 JUL £2984.9bn over 31 days). It is not a live feed from HM Treasury.
Formula: display = latestPublished + dailyRate × daysSinceAsOf. Official source: ONS — Public sector finances, UK: July 2026. Gilt yields (the interest rate, not this stock) are on the sovereign debt monitor.
What this number is
ONS headline monthly stock of what the public sector owes to the UK private sector and overseas, less liquid assets, excluding public sector banks. Provisional until later revisions.
- Headline stock is the latest published ONS monthly figure (series HF6W), with as-of month-end and bulletin links.
- The live-ticking display is an estimate: it interpolates forward from that stock using the average daily change between the last two ONS month-end observations — not a live HMT feed and not scraped from third-party debt-clock sites.
- Rate basis: 2026 JUN £2994.8bn → 2026 JUL £2984.9bn over 31 days (≈ £-319,354,839/day). Formula: display = latestPublished + dailyRate × daysSinceAsOf.
- Values revise when ONS republishes. Update data/processed/uk-national-debt.json (including dailyChangeGbp / interpolation) after each Public sector finances release.
Recent monthly path (ONS HF6W)
| Period | PSND ex (£bn) |
|---|---|
| 2026 JUL | 2,984.9 |
| 2026 JUN | 2,994.8 |
| 2026 MAY | 2,976 |
| 2026 APR | 2,940.7 |
| 2026 MAR | 2,918.4 |
| 2026 FEB | 2,883.2 |
| 2026 JAN | 2,871.6 |
| 2025 DEC | 2,925.5 |
| 2025 NOV | 2,927 |
| 2025 OCT | 2,896.9 |
| 2025 SEP | 2,913.4 |
| 2025 AUG | 2,906.8 |
| 2025 JUL | 2,889 |
| 2025 JUN | 2,867.6 |
| 2025 MAY | 2,867.5 |
| 2025 APR | 2,824.8 |
| 2025 MAR | 2,804.9 |
| 2025 FEB | 2,794.9 |
Series HF6W · PS: Net Debt (excluding public sector banks): £bn: CPNSA. Bulletin released 21 Aug 2026; next release scheduled 22 Sept 2026. Snapshot fetched into this app 14 Sept 2026.
Council borrowing on the Councils pages is a different local-authority stock from MHCLG — not this national PSND figure. Gilt yields — the interest rate on UK government bonds, not the size of the debt — are on /sovereign-debt.