UK mortgage approvals hit highest since before 2022 ‘mini-budget’

LONDON (Reuters) -British lenders approved 65,647 mortgages in September, the Bank of England said on Tuesday, the highest number since August 2022, shortly before the country was hit by the “mini-budget” bond market crisis under former Prime Minister Liz Truss.

The figure was slightly higher than the median forecast of 65,000 in a Reuters poll of economists.

Britain’s housing market gathered momentum after the BoE cut interest rates in August for the first time since 2020.

Earlier this month, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said house prices, sales and enquiries all rose in September.

The BoE data also showed a dip in net borrowing by consumers during September which edged down to 1.23 billion pounds ($1.60 billion) from 1.35 billion pounds in August.

That helped to lower the annual growth rate for all consumer credit to 7.5% in September, down from 7.7% in August and the slowest increase in more than a year.

Some measures of consumer confidence have fallen in the run-up to this week’s first budget of Britain’s new government which is likely to include tax increases.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned of tough measures to repair the public finances although he has also said the brunt of the measures will fall on those “with the broadest shoulders.

($1 = 0.7702 pounds)

(Writing by William Schomberg; editing by David Milliken and Suban Abdulla)