COVID-19 FAQs

A payment holiday is a temporary break from your mortgage payments to help you get through financial difficulties caused by the coronavirus situation. Before applying, please read ‘How will this affect my future mortgage payments?’ below for illustrative examples.

Making reduced payments to your mortgage is a temporary measure aimed at helping you if coronavirus has affected your income and you can’t make your full regular repayments. It’s generally in your best interest if you can make some payments towards your mortgage without affecting your essential living and work travel expenses. Before applying, please read ‘How will this affect my future mortgage payments?’ below for illustrative examples.

A payment holiday or reduced payments are temporary measures available if you have a mortgage for your home or a buy-to-let property, and your income has or will be affected by coronavirus.

You can apply for an initial period of 3 months. There is also an option to apply for an extension for a further 3 months if you are still impacted by the coronavirus situation.

The deadline for all applications is 31st October 2020.

We’ll accept a request from anyone named on the mortgage. We’ll send confirmation addressed to both borrowers to your correspondence address. If we receive two applications for the same account, we’ll process the one we receive first.

Yes – we offer payment holidays or temporarily reduced payments in this case on the understanding that you pass this relief on to tenants who are struggling to pay their rent. If you’re applying because your tenants have been affected by coronavirus, please select ‘Yes’ to the question ‘Has your household income been affected by the coronavirus situation?’ on our online form.

Before you think about how much you can afford to pay towards your mortgage, it’s important to consider your other monthly commitments. These can include essential living costs, such as household bills (for example, utilities, phone), travel expenses (for example, commuting, fuel), and other credit commitments (for example, loans, credit cards, overdrafts). For more help, please read ‘Where can I find out more information on support during this time?’ below.

During the payment holiday, no interest will be charged on the deferred payments. Interest will continue to accrue on the mortgage balance outstanding at the rate detailed in your Offer Letter and will be applied to the mortgage on our usual charging dates.

No, if we agree to a payment holiday or reduced payments, we’ll start it as soon as we can after you fill in the form. If you want the arrangement to begin at a later time, please come back and fill in the form at that time.

Yes – you can still submit an application to switch. If you’ve already applied for a rate switch that hasn’t taken effect yet, that’s OK too. Rate switches won’t affect the terms of your arrangement.

You may be able to extend the term of your mortgage so that the payments return to a similar amount like they were before your payment holiday. To discuss this and any other options, please get in touch.

Please note: if you choose a term extension, it’ll take you longer to repay your mortgage. Since you’ll be charged interest over this longer period, your total cost of borrowing will increase, which means you'll pay more for your mortgage overall than you would have done otherwise.

We can help in a number of ways if you have any concerns or you’re experiencing longer-term financial difficulty. Please get in touch with us so we can talk to you about your circumstances.

Arranging a payment holiday won’t impact your arrears status. It also won’t be recorded on your credit file, so it won’t affect your credit score. However, lenders might take your payment holiday into account when making future lending decisions.

We won’t ask you to provide evidence, but we may need to work through your individual circumstances to find the most appropriate way to support you.

If we agree to a payment holiday, or a reduction in your monthly payments, we’ll do our best to start it in time for your next mortgage payment. However, if your next payment is due soon, we might have to start the arrangement from the following month. We’ll confirm everything when we get back to you.

If you pay by Direct Debit, we’ll stop collecting your payments when the arrangement begins. If you pay by another method, you’ll need to stop the regular payments and make sure they begin again when the arrangement ends.

When the payment holiday ends, we’ll spread the deferred amounts over the remaining term, which will increase your regular payment. If you’d like to discuss a different option, please get in touch at the time.

If you have an interest only mortgage, you’ll need to make sure the plans you have in place to repay the full balance at the end of the mortgage term will cover any additional amounts due as a result of this arrangement.

This table shows the impact of taking a three month full or reduced payment holiday on monthly payments.

After the payment holiday the amount paid on a monthly basis increases and the total cost of borrowing over the term of the mortgage increases.

Making a contribution to your mortgage, no matter how small, will reduce the overall increase in costs.

The illustration is based on a repayment mortgage of £197,035.88 payable over 25 years, initially on a fixed rate of 2.41% for 5 years and then our variable tracker rate at 3.14% above the Bank of England Base Rate (currently 0.10%) for the remaining term.

This example assumes that at the end of the payment holiday we add the deferred payments to the mortgage.

The total cost of borrowing is made up of the loan amount and interest, it does not include other fees or charges.

These amounts are only a guide and are based on the assumption that there is no change to the mortgage or its terms, and that the Bank of England Base Rate does not change.

If you want to apply, please fill in our online form by clicking the button below – but please make sure you’ve read the FAQ's before deciding to do this. When applying online for your payment holiday or reduce your payments, we'll ask you about how coronavirus is affecting you. If you can afford to make any payment towards your mortgage, it’s generally in your best interest to do so.

The deadline for all applications is 31st October 2020.

You only need to apply once for each mortgaged property. If you have mortgages on multiple properties, please apply separately for each.