Britain has been urged by the European Commission to tackle the rapid rise in property prices with measures such as reining in the Help to Buy scheme, amid fears the booming housing market is posing a threat to the UK’s economic stability, the Financial Times reported. In its annual assessment of EU member states’ policies to boost growth and jobs, Brussels says the UK government should consider raising taxes on higher value properties, adjust the Help to Buy loan guarantee scheme, mitigate risks related to high mortgage indebtedness and build more houses.

More than 20,000 mortgage customers at the government's "bad bank" could be pushed into arrears if interest rates rise by a percentage point, its chief executive said on Tuesday, The Guardian reported. A rise of that scale would more than double the number of UK Asset Resolution's customers in arrears from under 16,000 two months ago. Richard Banks, who heads UKAR, said: "Our view, from customer research we have done and our modelling, is that if interest rates went up to 1.5% about 22,000 more customers might go into arrears.

Lending to UK businesses fell sharply in the first quarter of the year, according to Bank of England figures that raise questions about the effectiveness of the UK’s Funding for Lending Scheme to encourage bank loans, the Financial Times reported. The UK central bank said yesterday that lending under the scheme dropped by £2.7bn in the three months to April. The fall was driven by a sharp decrease in lending to the commercial real estate sector.

Almost a quarter of employers running final salary pension schemes face a substantial increase in the annual levy they pay into the pensions lifeboat fund under proposals announced on Thursday. In a consultation document, the Pensions Protection Fund, which continues to pay benefits to scheme members if their employer goes bust, unveiled plans for a radical overhaul of the way it assesses the insolvency risk of schemes paying the levy.

Debt-laden British pub company Punch Taverns Plc said on Tuesday that certain stakeholders had proposed a restructuring of its securitisations that would likely reduce the company's debt by about 26 percent. Shares in the company, which has about 4,300 pubs, sank more than 20 percent to 11.50 pence in morning trade on the London Stock Exchange. Punch's debt structure is complex and split into two securitised vehicles. Punch A holds 1.45 billion pounds of gross debt, while Punch B holds 884 million pounds, according to the company's 2013 annual report.

Nationwide, Britain’s biggest building society, has warned that efforts to curb mortgage lending in an attempt to cool the London housing market could have “unintended consequences” for the rest of the country, The Telegraph reported. Mark Rennison, the lender’s finance director, said that concerns about house prices had been exaggerated and did not warrant changes to the Government’s controversial Help to Buy scheme. It came after Nationwide revealed that profits had more than doubled, with the value of its mortgage loans rising by 31pc in the last year.

A group of 13 companies involved in a carbon credit scheme have been wound up in the High Court on grounds of public interest, Insolvency Today reported. Following an investigation by the Insolvency Service, the companies, which raised over £19m through the sale of carbon credits to the public for investment, were put into liquidation. The investigation found Eco-Synergies Ltd, a wholesaler of Voluntary Emission Reduction (VER) carbon credits, was at the heart of the scheme.

Prime Minister David Cameron has said the government will consider scaling back its Help to Buy mortgage support scheme if the Bank of England believes it is inflating a housing bubble, as official data showed an annual house price rise of 17 per cent in London, the Financial Times reported. Mr Cameron told the BBC he agreed with Mark Carney, BoE governor, when he said last weekend that the sharp rise in house prices posed “the biggest risk” to the UK’s economic recovery.

A new standards body for British bankers will be launched this year, with a chairman appointed by an independent panel led by Bank of England governor Mark Carney, the Irish Times reported. Richard Lambert, a former director general of the Confederation of British Industry, who was tasked with setting the body up, said the Banking Standards Review Council (BSRC) would be a champion for better banking standards in the UK.

People could be stopped taking out mortgages worth many times their salary to buy new homes, the Governor of the Bank of England has said, The Telegraph reported. Mark Carney said in an interview that capping the size of mortgage ratios to salaries was one measure the Bank was considering to controlling the housing market. The Bank was also watching to see if the Government’s Help to Buy scheme – in which the Government gives people taxpayers money to cover deposits on new homes worth up to £600,000 - was fuelling them.