UK Government and the country’s mortgage industry have pledged to work together to make sure home lending is available for every stage of life from first time buyers to retirees.

Following a meeting between the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, other government ministers and mortgage industry representatives, work is to be done to make lending more transparent.

The meeting also discussed the measures that have already been taken to boost help for first time buyers such as Help to Buy and ISAs and how they can be taken forward. It comes at a time when advice given by lenders to borrowers has been found to be mixed in the aftermath of changes brought in last year.

In particular there has been criticism of the new questionnaire that all applicants have to fill in so that lenders can ascertain that they can afford repayments with instances of people not revealing all their spending plans for fear of being rejected. A lot of older people and self-employed have also found it harder to get a mortgage.

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Harriett Baldwin, revealed that since 2010 some 2.8m mortgages have been advanced, worth a total of £444.5bn, and by backing Government’s flagship Help to Buy scheme, the industry has helped nearly 100,000 people get onto or move up the housing ladder.