July 2004

Building societies are registered under the Building Societies Act 1986. There was little in the way of registration activity during the report period. This was primarily because each registered building society had only fairly recently registered both a new memorandum and a new set of rules following the implementation of the Building Societies Act 1997.

We retain the statutory functions under the Building Societies Act of advising the Treasury and other Government departments on any matters relating to building societies. During the course of the year we have given the Treasury advice and assistance on a number of matters. These include:

  • the Treasury joint consultation with DTI on the implementation of the Modernisation Directive and arrangements for the use of International Accounting Standards from 1 January 2005;
  • the implementation of the Fair Value Accounting Regulations, which also commence on 1 January 2005;
  • the development of the framework for Child Trust Funds (CTFs), culminating in the Child Trust Funds Act 2004 and associated regulations which will enable societies to 'offer' or 'introduce' stakeholder CTFs.

We assisted the Treasury in responding to consultation by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on their proposals to give local authorities guidance under section 15(1)(a) of the Local Government Act 2003 on; amongst other matters, the application of 'specified' investments and the effect of the guidance on building societies.

Building society statistics for 2003 are now available and a set of 14 tables follows, similar in scope, coverage and level of detail to the tables we published in June 2003.

Notes to the tables explain the basis of the statistics and conventions used in compiling them.

Statistical Tables

Historical time series (1994-2003)

  • Table 1 [ PDF | 44 KB | 1 pages ]
    Building Societies - Service activity
  • Table 2 [ PDF | 52 KB | 1 pages ]
    Building Societies - Operating ratios
  • Table 3 [ PDF | 52 KB | 1 pages ]
    Building Societies - Liabilities
  • Table 4 [ PDF | 52 KB | 1 pages ]
    Building Societies - Assets
  • Table 5 [ PDF | 47 KB | 1 pages ]
    Building Societies - Degree of concentration

Recent years only (1999-2003)

  • Table 6 [ PDF | 49 KB | 1 pages ]
    Building Society share of net mortgage lending
  • Table 7 [ PDF | 48 KB | 1 pages ]
    Breakdown of mortgage lending on residential property to individuals
  • Table 8 [ PDF | 45 KB | 1 pages ]
    Breakdown of mortgage lending by interest rate basis
  • Table 9 [ PDF | 44 KB | 1 pages ]
    Mortgage arrears
  • Table 10 [ PDF | 50 KB | 1 pages ]
    Liquid assets held by personal sector
  • Table 11 [ PDF | 48 KB | 1 pages ]
    Pattern of funding
  • Table 12 [ PDF | 50 KB | 1 pages ]
    Composition and maturity profile of societies’ funding and liquidity (as at end 2003)
  • Table 13 [ PDF | 46 KB | 1 pages ]
    Income, expenditure and surplus
  • Table 14 [ PDF | 43 KB | 1 pages ]
    Capital ratios

Notes to the tables

The Building Society Statistics we published in June 2003 can be found in the document entitled Reporting on Mutual Societies [ PDF | 289 KB | 31 pages ].