Mr. Stephen Bell:

The figures we have shared with the committee on previous appearances is that in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we saw something between 0.5% and 0.7% of the housing stock repossessed each year for about a five-year period. That is the level of repossessions that most economies would see as they correct from a severe economic contraction. The level of 150 repossessions a quarter, which is the most recent figure we quoted, would seem to be a more normal representation of what will be needed to see this problem work through the courts system. The difficulty is that for the period from mid-2011 to the end of 2013, the average number of repossessions was 26 per quarter, not 150. One has seen quite a dramatic difference. In effect what happened was that cases that could not be heard for two years or more are now having to hit the system.