Credit card mortgage payments 'shocking'

About 6 per cent of households said they had used their plastic in order to keep up with their housing costs during the past 12 months, according to the charity Shelter.

People in working class professions were most likely to have resorted to using othere debts to cover their mortgages or rent at 8 per cent, but 4 per cent of ABC1s also admitted they had been forced to use their credit cards this way.

A Shelter spokeswoman, said: “This is a shocking discovery, that over a million households in Britain are in such desperate circumstances that they need to borrow money on credit cards to pay for basic housing costs.

“If people are already struggling to the extent that they fear losing their home, increasing credit card debt cannot be the answer.”