Gross mortgage lending for August totalled £8.2bn, 3% higher than in August 2010.
The slight turn up in recent months in both house purchase and remortgaging approvals led to gross mortgage lending being stronger in August but as repayments continued at a high level, net mortgage lending increased by just £0.7bn in August.
The number of mortgage approvals increased to 78,288 from 75,314 in July.
David Dooks, statistics director at the BBA, said: “The weak economic environment continues to undermine confidence in both household and business sectors, which impacts on borrowing demand.
“The banks' new mortgage lending has ticked up in the past couple of months with higher buy-to-let demand and some business sectors are edging towards year-on-year borrowing growth, although the general landscape is one of households not wanting to take on more borrowing and businesses waiting for trading conditions to improve before borrowing to expand or invest. Against this backdrop, paying down existing debt dominates the net lending figures.”
