UK & World News: Alternative census lifts lid on UK

Joe Bloggs wakes up in his semi-detached home at 6.57am, owns a silver Ford Focus and goes to bed at 10.39pm, an “alternative census” found.

The run-of-the-mill British family sits down for dinner at 5.54pm but only eat together three times each week, the study revealed.

The poll of more than 2,000 households has disclosed the average day-to-day lives of British families.

Half of all families say their favoured form of entertainment is watching television – the typical family has the box switched on for nine hours each day and their favoured show is Doctor Who.

The study, carried out by the home energy management service AlertMe, discovered that the average weekly food shop came to £76.02 and a further £12 each week is spent on alcohol.

A typical British family has £3,280 in savings. Just over half have a mortgage and the average amount paid off is 32% of the balance.

Fathers are most concerned with keeping the bills down – in more than a third of households he is the person who turns off lights and stand-by switches. Meanwhile, mothers are bearing the brunt of chores, doing an average of four and a half hours of housework each week, including at least five loads of laundry.

It also found the average family has two arguments per week.

Mary Turner, chief executive officer of AlertMe, said: “The government census tells us information that is quite run-of-the-mill and we wanted to find out the bare bones of people’s everyday behaviour; what they eat, the car they drive, how much they spend and try to save.

“This study shows that many families, and parents especially, are fairly conservative with their spending. Forking out £76 on a weekly grocery shop for a family of four is fairly frugal.”

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