Lending for remortgages crept above last year’s figure with £4.7m of lending last month compared to £4.5m in May 2014 while house purchase lending dropped from £11.2m to £10.3m year-on-year.

Approvals for remortgaging rose by 22% year-on-year from 28,324 to 34,561 while house purchase approvals edged up by just over 1% to 69,175.

Brian Murphy, head of lending at Mortgage Advice Bureau, said: “Today’s figures show that the remortgage market has sprung into life over the last year. Remortgaging accounted for almost one in three loans approved last month as more people were given the go-ahead to switch than at any point since January 2014.

“Low rates and rising house prices are giving many homeowners a stronger incentive to switch their loan than they have had for years.”

Overall gross lending in May suffered a slight year-on-year decline as the non seasonally adjusted statistics revealed a 5% drop from £16.8m to £15.9m.

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The Bank’s statistics cover lending from major banks and building societies and non-bank specialist lenders.