Housing charity Shelter will today call on the Government and mortgage lenders to jointly fund a rescue package to help struggling homeowners facing repossession.

Treasury and housing ministers meet with the Council of Mortgage Lenders tomorrow to talk about the housing crisis and the number of repossessions hitting homeowners.

But Shelter has demanded that the talks are about solving the crisis now and not about "passing the buck" between Government and lenders.


The call comes as new figures by Shelter show repossessions could be 20% higher than official figures by the Council for Mortgage Lenders (CML).

Shelter Chief Executive Adam Sampson said: "The Government bailed out Northern Rock, and now they and mortgage lenders must stop passing the buck between each other and take responsibility to help hard-pressed families in genuine need.

"The human misery of people being repossessed is devastating, with families uprooted from the security of their homes and left to fend for themselves.

"The Government has made billions of pounds from Stamp Duty and the lenders billions from mortgages. It's now time to plough some of this money into helping save people from repossession."

At present the CML estimates that 45,000 homeowners will be repossessed this year. Its calculations are based on people losing their homes after defaulting on ordinary first charge mortgages.

(CD/JM)