Help with keeping your home

Help with keeping your home

You may be concerned about how the global economic downturn might affect your housing. If your job has been affected, you may be worried about keeping up with your mortgage repayments.

Below you will find information about the help that is currently available. Additional support for homeowners is being developed and will be available over the next few months.

Help to avoid repossession
We want to help people in financial difficulties stay in their homes. If you are worried about paying your mortgage, you should talk to your lender first as it may be able to help you find alternatives, such as cutting your monthly repayments. New rules introduced in November 2008 mean that repossession should always be a last resort, and lenders have agreed to look at all possible options to prevent it.

You may be able to get free legal advice from your county court. In about 85 per cent of cases, this service helps to avoid immediate repossession when people attend court. To get help, contact your local county court.

Depending on your circumstances you may be eligible for one of two schemes
1. Support for Mortgage Interest may help you with your mortgage interest payments to enable you to stay in your home if you’ve been on certain benefits for 13 weeks or more, or if you are on the lowest income and have limited savings. This help has been extended to increase the maximum amount of capital borrowed on which we will meet the interest payments.

Visit Directgov for more information.

2. The Mortgage Rescue Scheme is designed to help you stop your home being repossessed if this would mean that you became homeless and entitled to support from your local council.

If you are likely to be able to get your situation back on track, then a housing association may buy a share in your home. This would cut your monthly repayments. If you are in more serious difficulties, a housing association may buy your home and you will then be able to stay there as a tenant.

Contact your Greenwich Council's housing department or local Citizens Advice Bureau for more details.

strong>Help with housing costs
If you need financial help to pay all or part of your rent, you may get Housing Benefit, provided that your income and capital (savings and investments) are below a certain level. If you rent from a private landlord there’s a new way of working out Housing Benefit – known as Local Housing Allowance.

Your council can also help with advice on rented accommodation or social housing and can tell you what help you may be able to receive, including temporary housing and other help if you are at risk of becoming homeless.

Contact Greenwich Council for more details.

Who else can help?
National Debtline, 0808 808 4000.
Our local Citizen's Advice Bureau.
The National Homelessness Advice Service