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Public sector borrowing was £11.7 billion in November – is this sustainable?

ended 19. December 2025

Borrowing – the difference between total public sector spending and income – was £11.7 billion in November 2025; this was £1.9 billion (or 14%) less than November 2024 and the lowest November borrowing since 2021, ONS data has today revealed.

This comes as gross HMRC Tax and NICs receipts for April 2025 to November 2025 are £579 billion, which is £41.8 billion higher than the same period last year, the government has revealed.

Borrowing in the financial year to November 2025 was £132.3 billion. This was £10 billion (or 8.2%) more than in the same eight-month period of 2024 and the second-highest April to November borrowing on record, after that of 2020.

Borrowing in the financial year to November 2025 was provisionally estimated at 4.4% of gross domestic product (GDP). This was 0.1 percentage points more than in the same eight-month period of 2024.

The current budget deficit – borrowing to fund day-to-day public sector activities – was £5.6 billion in November 2025. This brings the total current budget deficit in the financial year to November 2025 to £93 billion, which is £7 billion (or 8.1%) more than in the same eight-month period of 2024.

  • What do these figures say about the UK economy?
  • What needs to be done it?
  • What is your messaage to Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer?

Responses asap please.

2 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Rob Mansfield
Independent Financial Advisor at Rootes Wealth Management
This is the riskiest part of Labour's budget. Despite the tax hikes, we're still out spending our income. The Government's plan relies on paying today for growth tomorrow and it doesn't look like the growth is going to happen. The national debt is already too high and so we're walking a tightrope. This is a new black hole forming.
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Anita Wright
Chartered Financial Planner at Ribble Wealth Management
Despite the fact that taxes are an all-time high, tax receipts are an all-time high. HMRC are absolutely squeezing every last penny out of everybody, left, right and centre and despite that, on all measures, in absolute terms, against GDP, per capita, all those different measures of deficits and debt, they’re still going up. What does that mean? It looks and feels like the dreaded debt-doom loop: higher receipts, but higher baseline spending and borrowing that refuses to go away. And if you are honest about the “ways out”: you have default (politically unthinkable), massive spending cuts/austerity (no real political will), and then the ugly remainder — inflationary erosion/debasement over time and more tax drag (threshold freezes, stealth rises, broadened bases). That is the route they tend to take because it is the path of least resistance.