UK parents will spend a billion pounds on Christmas presents this year

Thu, 17 Nov 2005

Research by Churchill Home Insurance has shown that children in the UK will receive £1.4 billion worth of presents this Christmas.

A breakdown of this shows that parents are spending on average £119 on each of their own children and approximately £16 on other children they know.

However Churchill points out that it’s all very well to keep children happy with lavish presents but there are consequences of such spending.

Currently children have £7.3 billion worth of toys and gadgets at home in their bedrooms. Broken down, this works out to £618 for each child. After Christmas the value of goods will amount to £750.

This in turn may affect the limits of most home contents insurance.

Martin Scott, head of Churchill’s home insurance said, "The research suggests that there are millions of pounds worth of gifts in homes around Christmas time."

To avoid problems many home insurance providers increase the contents limit automatically over Christmas. The increase is usually about ten per cent or £3,000.

Mr Scott said, "It’s important that once the Christmas period is over, homeowners review the value of their home contents to ensure their contents sum insured is still adequate to replace all their possessions as new."

Vicky Emmott, senior underwriter Halifax Home Insurance, said, "The onus is on you to have the correct insurance in place to cover your gifts from loss or damage – even if they are being stored away from your home.

"With high-value items such as iPods, PSP's and children's favourite Bandai Tamagotchi likely to feature on letters to Santa this year a fruitful Christmas could boost the value of your home contents by hundreds or thousands of pounds."

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