Lenders report mortgage surge

Conflicting data over the state of the housing market was released yesterday with figures showing that price growth was slowing but mortgage lending booming. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said interest rate rises and warnings that house prices could fall had slowed the property market. But at the same time the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the British Bankers' Association both reported a surge in mortgage lending during the month.

VIEWS SOUGHT: The leaders of the top 350 companies have been urged by Bill Callaghan, chairman of the Health and Safety Commission (HSC), to give their views on how to prevent sickness absence caused by work-related stress. He has asked them to take part in the HSC's consultation by visiting www.hse.gov.uk/stress/issues.htm by August 27.

record defended: Enterprise Inns, which owns almost 9,000 pubs, yesterday defended its record in dealing with tenants. The company told the Trade and Industry Select Committee it did everything possible to ensure licensees were successful and said the vast majority were satisfied. But one MP accused Enterprise of holding tenants "over a barrel" and said beer orders, where landlords can only buy alcohol from their pub company, acted as a straitjacket.

COMMITTEE HEAD: One of the world's leading figures in the aerospace industry is to chair the steering committee for Yorkshire Forward's Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham. Jim Robinson, former president of Aftermarket Business, Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Engines and president of Fairchild Aerospace, succeeds former Boeing vice-president Jerry Ennis.

CITY VISITORS: A group of Italian businesswomen will be at Durham Business School today to learn about the successes of the Women into the Network group. The eight businesswomen are all members of the Unioncamere, the regional Union of Lazio Chambers of Commerce, in Rome.

BA 'recovering': British Airways said yesterday it was on the road to recovery after one of the worst periods in its history but warned that cost-cutting remained key to its profit.