Data from the British Bankers Association (BBA) revealed more struggling news from the UK mortgage approval sector. September saw the slowest net mortgage lending period in almost ten years.

Net lending remained in negative territory last month as bank debt continued to be repaid. Net mortgage lending grew just slightly over 1.5 billion pounds in September compared with 2.5 billion the month before. This September was still considerably off pace with September of 2009.

September of last year had a mortgage approval figure of over 42,000. Compare that with this September at 31,000 and the outlook is grim.

David Dooks, the spending review association’s statistics director, commented on the status of the current mortgage market, saying: "Demand for new mortgage remains low despite more properties on the market and falling house prices."

The continued slowdown in the housing market comes in the wake of house prices taking another leap downwards during the month of September - the largest monthly dive since records began.

Paul Diggle, housing market economist for Capital Economics discussed the possibility of the UK being closer to having a normal functioning housing sector, saying: "Coming before the full impact of the fiscal contraction, the pain of which was fleshed out further in last week's Spending Review, the latest fall in mortgage lending is another sign that a normalization in housing-market activity levels is a long way off."

Howard Archer, chief economist for IHS Global Insight, remarked on the lending market in general, saying: "The increased decline in net lending to nonfinancial companies in September reported by the BBA maintains concern that ongoing tight credit conditions remain a significant obstacle to economic activity."

Remortgage lending also slowed during the month of September, down from the August total of 8.1 billion to 8 billion.