The Bath and Earl Shilton have both withdrawn all their deals except on standard variable rates. Other banks, such as the Newbury, Melton Mowbray and the Tipton & Coseley, are only lending to customers local to their areas.

The Bath building society said it already has too many customers.

"We have simply been inundated with mortgage applications and inquiries in the last few weeks," said the chief executive Dick Jenkins.

"We want to preserve the level and quality of service we offer our customers and we simply can't do that if we have far too many applications to process," he added.

Tipton & Coseley said:  We were getting a lot of calls from around the country and we wanted to make sure that people locally can get them.”