HOLIDAY IS ALMOST OVER FOR MORTGAGE BREAKS

THE Covid-19 mortgage holiday season is drawing to a close and some borrowers will be back to the horrible reality of having to restart payments by the end of this week.

Specific pandemic mortgage deferrals were announced by the Chancellor on March 17. They ran for three months and after that time, those who were still struggling could apply for a second three-month delay.

Sarah Coles, personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “If you can afford to make repayments, you should go back to them as soon as you can. If you can only afford partial repayments, a little is better than nothing.

“Unfortunately, if you opt for more delays or lower payments, this will impact on your credit report. This will detail payment shortfalls and arrears once the official coronavirus payment holidays are over and will make it much harder to borrow or remortgage in future.”

A petition has been launched on the Parliament website (petition. parliament.uk/petitions/334388) to force the Government to use its records to identify all women who are underpaid their state pension.

Ex-pensions minister Steve Webb, a partner at Lane Clark & Peacock, has created the petition which needs 10,000 signatures to get a response.

The issue concerns married, divorced and widowed women getting less pension than they are entitled to under the old state pension system (ie those receiving it before April 2016).

Webb said: “It is welcome that the Government is using records to identify a particular group of married women who it admits have been underpaid.

“Lump sum repayments to this group of around £10,000 are quite common.

“But there is a larger group of women who are being underpaid, or were underpaid in the past, and this petition is designed to find those who have been missing out.”