LONDON (Reuters) – British mortgage lending recovered strongly from May’s record low last month and households slowed the pace at which they repaid debt, as the economy began to open up from the coronavirus lockdown in June.
Mortgage approvals rose in June to 40,010 from May’s record-low reading of 9,273, Bank of England data showed on Wednesday, a bigger increase than the rise to 33,900 that was the average forecast in a Reuters poll of economists.
Households repaid a net 86 million pounds of debt in June as the lockdown gave them fewer opportunities to spend, and unemployment has yet to affect many due to a government scheme that has paid the wages of more than 9 million employees.
This was down from 4.542 billion pounds in May but less than the net 2.0 billion pound repayment economists had forecast.
(Reporting by David Milliken and Andy Bruce)
