How to use the dates
They run from today. Print the table, or write the six dates in your calendar with the action next to each. The order matters more than the dates: the biggest money is in week one, and every week of drift on the Standard Variable Rate costs you the week-one figure divided by four.
Week one is the whole book in an afternoon
Find four numbers — balance, years remaining, current rate, the date your fix ends — and then ask your lender for the full list of products you are eligible for, with the rate, the arrangement fee, the early repayment charge and the revert rate for each. Ask for the switch-to-a-better-rate cut-off date in writing, because gov.uk and UK Finance give different answers: gov.uk says "until their new term begins", UK Finance's own FAQ says "up to two weeks before". Assume the earlier one.
You can lock a rate six months early
Under the Mortgage Charter you can secure a new deal up to six months before your fix ends, and still switch to a better one if rates fall before the new term starts. In H1 2026, 880,635 mortgages were locked in that way. In a rising market the six-month lock is protection, and the earlier you take it the better.
The thing you are most afraid of is the thing that almost never happens
Between July 2023 and June 2026, across the whole Mortgage Charter population, the number of properties repossessed within twelve months of a first missed payment was 376. Over the same period around 354,000 mortgages — 3.9% of all regulated mortgage contracts — had payments temporarily reduced with no affordability check and no credit-file mark. The system is far more forgiving than the fear suggests, but only for people who pick up the phone.
Free means free
StepChange, National Debtline, Citizens Advice and MoneyHelper are all free, and none of them will charge you to set up or run a debt management plan. If you are asked to pay for debt advice, you are talking to a commercial firm, not a charity. The same goes for motor finance redress: claims firms take a cut of money you can claim yourself for nothing.
What Breathing Space does and does not do
Standard Breathing Space gives 60 days with interest, charges, contact and enforcement frozen on your arrears. It does not pause your ongoing monthly mortgage payment, which you must keep making throughout along with rent, utilities, council tax instalments and insurance. Student loans, court fines, child maintenance and Universal Credit advances are excluded outright. You can only get it through an approved debt adviser, once in any twelve months, and it covers England and Wales only.
Before you use this
This is general information, not financial advice. It does the math on the numbers you type in. It does not know your circumstances, and it does not recommend any lender, product or course of action. Nothing you type here is stored or sent anywhere. It stays on your phone and disappears when you close the page. There is no account, no sign-up and nothing saved.
