Shelter Scotland today (Monday) called for a major publicity drive for schemes aimed at helping people facing repossession.

The charity welcomed the Scottish Government's expanded Home Owners Support Scheme launched today [1] which is aimed at helping struggling homeowners in Scotland stay in their homes.

And the charity also called on all major players in Scotland to promote the schemes after recent Shelter research showed many people didn't know about 'mortgage rescue schemes'.

Shelter's survey of sub-prime borrowers shows that 69 per cent of respondents were unaware or knew nothing about 'mortgage rescue schemes', aimed at helping people experiencing problems with their mortgage payments [2].

Graeme Brown, Director of Shelter Scotland, housing and homelessness charity – which provides free advice and support to people across Scotland – said it was vital people knew about the schemes.

He said: 'People need to be told about these new rights and where they can access impartial support and advice about them. The voluntary sector is doing some of this and Shelter has already updated its get advice pages at www.shelter.org.uk/getadvice and briefed our advice workers but we have limited resources.

'At a time when repossessions are on the rise, we need to make sure all advice providers are telling people about these schemes and the Scottish Government and local authorities are doing as much as possible to promote them.'

Notes to editors

1. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2009/03/16103352
2. Shelter's survey was conducted online with 1,212 sub-prime borrowers from across the UK between 30 January 2009 to 3 February 2009 by YouGov's Financial Services Group. The figures are unweighted. The borrowers in the survey have been defined as sub-prime if their lender was felt to be primarily operating in the sub-prime market or because they said, in a previous survey, that they had a credit repair mortgage.