Mortgage approvals by the main high street banks recovered from a poor end to 2017 but are still down annually, lending figures show.

Data from banking trade body UK Finance, shows high street brands Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC, RBS, Santander UK, TSB and Virgin Money approved just 28,721 mortgages for house purchase last month.

This is at least up from 24,840 in December but was down 5% annually.

In contrast, approvals for remortgages were up 4.6% to 28,721.

Gross mortgage lending values were at least up overall at £13.8bn, 7.7% up on January 2017. Of this, £6.4bn was for home purchases and £6.7bn for remortgaging. In contrast, in January 2017, there was £6.5bn of gross mortgage lending for house purchase and £5.6bn for remortgages.

The value of gross lending across the whole mortgage market was up 9.8% to £21.9bn, above last year’s monthly average of £21.4bn.

Eric Leenders, managing director of personal finance at UK Finance, said: “Gross mortgage lending in January increased by almost 10% compared to the same period last year, and was higher than the monthly average, as customers took advantage of mortgage deals on offer at the end of 2017.”