The Bank of England left thousands of home movers in limbo today as it was forced to shut down its system for transferring mortgage payments.
Technical problems caused by “routine maintenance” at the weekend mean thousands of payments between banks are not being settled automatically, with the only the biggest amounts being processed manually while the system is repaired.
Mortgage transfers and other payments between banks have been hit.
But the shutdown means that home-buyers moving today faced delays getting hold of the keys. One mover, Joe Friedlein, tweeted: “This has to be top of my ‘what I don’t want to happen on the day that we are moving house’ list.”
Mr Friedlein, moving home in Colchester today, told the Standard: “I don’t know what happens. We’ve got four houses in the chain and none of those (sales) can occur because the money can’t be handed around. I rang my solicitor this morning and he said that they hadn’t received any funds and that nothing had come through from my mortgage provider.”
The Bank has suspended its so-called Real Time Gross Settlement system, which is used by payments company CHAPS to transfer mortgage funds.
A Bank spokesman insisted “that all payments made today will be processed” and it would restart the system in a “controlled manner” when the bug has been fixed. The Bank has the capacity to increase the system to push through more payments when it is restarted.
Mark Hayward, managing director of the National Association of Estate Agents, added: “This is going to cause some big issues in terms of completions and keys not being handed over. This is watershed week because it’s a week before half term and families are keen to move.
A CHAPS spokesman said it would extend its operational day to enable customers to submit and receive payments later than normal. “Any customer who is waiting for a CHAPS payment to settle today should speak to their own bank,” he said.
