Increasing numbers of homeowners are taking a holiday from mortgage payments as the pressure on their finances intensifies.

Several major lenders have reported a rise in borrowers taking or planning to take a mortgage holiday, which allows them to skip payments for up to a year.

It is one indicator that borrowers are struggling to cope with household expenses, experts said.

Mortgage rates have soared as lenders struggle to secure funding, and food and utility bills are also spiralling

Sue Anderson, of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, said: “A lender would make an assumption that an inquiry about a payment holiday is a likely indicator of financial trouble.”

Nationwide Building Society, the UK's second-biggest lender, said the number of customers taking a break had increased recently.

It said there had been no change in the number of borrowers switching to interest-only loans or extending their terms, both of which would cut monthly repayments.

Bradford & Bingley, which this week reported a rise in the number of borrowers who had fallen into arrears, said that it had experienced a rise in inquiries about payment holidays. A spokesman for B&B said: “We expect to see that translated into people restructuring their finances, either through taking a payment holiday or extending the term of their mortgage.”

A spokesman for Yorkshire Building Society said that more of its customers were expressing an interest in payment options that would cut monthly bills.

The spokesman said: “There has been an increase in the number of inquiries about payment holidays and interest-only loans, but this could partly be due to the fact that we are contacting people who we think are having difficulties.”

Switching to an interest-only deal on a £150,000 25-year mortgage at 5.5 per cent would cut repayments by nearly £250, while extending the mortgage term by five years would shave about £70 a month off the bill.

Debt charities are also reporting a rise in people who would like to miss some mortgage payments. Chris Tapp, of Credit Action, said that there had been a sharp increase in borrowers considering a holiday. “We expect to see that trend continuing in the coming months,” he said.

The housing market has stalled recently as lenders have tightened their criteria as well as raising their rates, denying mortgages to all but the most cash-rich first-time buyers.

The latest signal of this slowdown in the UK economy emerged yesterday as data showed that the building of new homes slumped to a record low.

The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply's construction PMI index for housing activity fell to 32.7 from 40.3 in April, the lowest level since the series began in 1997. Any figure below 50 indicates that the sector is contracting.

Overall construction activity, which includes commercial and civil buildings as well as houses, fell at the sharpest rate on record, slipping from 46.1 to 43.9.

Analysts cautioned that the construction sector, which accounts for 6 per cent of GDP, could be in for a prolonged period of difficulty as the housing and commercial property markets continued to stall and government resources for civil projects became more scarce.

Howard Archer, of Global Insight, the economics consultancy, said: “Housebuilders are deeply concerned about the state and outlook for the sector as activity and prices buckle under the damaging mix of elevated affordability pressures and very tight lending conditions.”

Sub-contractors have also been hit hard by the slump in business, CIPS said.

Roy Ayliffe, director of professional practice at CIPS, said: “May data for the sector heralded a further, more marked, contraction in levels of new business and, notably, the use of sub-contractors fell at the fastest rate in survey history as demand for their services continued to wane.”