Mortgage approvals for house purchase were 2% higher in August than in the same month last year.

There were 40,476 approvals, says the British Bankers’ Association, compared with 39,740 a year earlier. The value of approvals rose 5%, from £6.2bn to £6.5bn

The BBA figures show the total number of approvals in August was 64,190, down from the previous August’s 70,859. The fall was due to a tail-off in remortgaging.

In separate statistics newly released, HMRC said that there were 99,930 residential transactions in August – down 1.7% on July, but up 8.4% on August last year.