Treasury minister Yvette Cooper today demanded fewer home repossessions by banks as mortgage holders increasingly struggle to keep up with repayments.
Treasury minister Yvette Cooper today demanded fewer home repossessions by banks as mortgage holders increasingly struggle to keep up with repayments.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury is said to be working with the Ministry of Justice on tightening requirements on lenders seeking repossession orders in the courts.
"We need a more responsible approach to repossessions," she told a Sunday newspaper.
"What we are looking at is something looking much more widely at all of the banks because I think repossession needs to be a lot rarer.
"We need to do everything that we can to keep people in their own homes."
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) is predicting that 45,000 properties will be repossessed this year - up from 26,200 last year.
Ms Cooper suggested there was no way of avoiding "tougher times ahead", saying that the global nature of the slowdown was beyond the powers of governments to prevent.
But she added: "What we can do is step in and, by dealing with the problems in the banking system, prevent the worst of the credit squeeze hitting people."
The Government has been under pressure to curb state-owned Northern Rock's so-called "aggressive" repossession tactics.
Of the 19,000 homes repossessed in the first half of this year, about 4,000 were by Northern Rock.
On Friday, the charity Credit Action urged the Treasury to put pressure on Northern Rock to adopt a more flexible approach towards borrowers who fall behind on their mortgage payments.
The charity said that Northern Rock, which was nationalised in the wake of last year's catastrophic bank-run, was more than twice as likely to repossess homes as other lenders.
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said: "I welcome the fact that, after burying its head in the sand for months, despite growing numbers of repossession orders going through the courts, the Government is now finally committed to preventing large scale home repossession of the kind that we saw under the previous Conservative administration.
"Yvette Cooper's current offer is extremely general and doesn't identify the key steps which must be taken.
"The Government must issue fresh instructions to the courts as to how repossession cases will be handled so that repossession is the last resort.
"It must also implement a properly regulated system of 'rent back', developed by housing associations and councils and using the funding for social housing, so that families in arrears can stay in their own homes."
