Twenty-eight representative county courts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were analysed.

STATEMENTS FROM LENDERS Home and County response [1.5MB] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here Statement from Platform Statement from London Scottish Statement by Swift Advances Alliance and Leicester

Around 120 mortgage lenders initiated hearings for repossession in this time.

We divided these into companies that offer exclusively 'prime' mortgages and those that specialise in or offer 'sub-prime' mortgages.

There are no figures to say whether an individual loan is prime or sub-prime. The number of hearings brought by each company was tallied.

We then divided this number of repossession hearings by the most recent figures for the size of outstanding mortgage loans. This gave us a figure for the number of repossession hearings brought per �1bn of outstanding assets. No figures for the number of loans lent are available. A repossession hearing may not necessarily lead to a repossession.

Lenders facing most repossession hearings in relation to size.

Name of lender 1. Swift 2. Lehman 3. Kensington 4. GE Money 5. GMAC

Repossession hearing rate 363 hearings per �1bn assets 80 64 54 52

Compare to RBS 370x more likely to repossess 82 66 55 54

1. Number of repossession hearings in our survey, divided by latest figures from the Council for Mortgage Lenders for 'mortgage assets' or outstanding mortgages.

2. Royal Bank of Scotland customers suffer 0.98 repossession hearings per �1bn of assets, and is broadly representative of a purely 'prime' lender.

3. Average no repossession hearings across the entire industry (prime and sub-prime) is 6.49 per �1bn assets.

4. Lehman Brothers Group consists of Southern Pacific Mortgages, Preferred Mortgages and until this September, the London Mortgage Company. Lehman Brothers dispute the figures and the methodology used in this survey. Lehman's declined to provide alternative figures.