To help homeowners and landlords facing financial difficulty because of the outbreak of coronavirus, the government has instructed all lenders to offer borrowers a payment holiday of up to three months.
When the initiative was first announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak, the support was only available for residential mortgage borrowers. A day later this was extended to individual and limited company landlords with buy to let mortgages.
Barclays, however, is not yet able to extend the facility to landlords.
The government’s three month payment holiday initiative triggered a flood of calls from anxious borrowers to their mortgage lenders driving up call waiting times to several hours in some cases.
Many banks have responded by offering an online form for borrowers to request a payment freeze.
Barclays and HSBC, however, have yet to offer an online option. Coventry and Yorkshire Building Societies say they are planning to offer an online request form soon.
A spokesperson for Barclays said: “This is an unprecedented and ever-changing situation, we are constantly reviewing how we best support all of our customers and are working on an appropriate solution and will provide an update later this week.”
