So far, the mortgage broker Charcol estimates that only 20 per cent of lenders have systems that work in this way, although that minority includes Halifax, the UK's largest mortgage lender.Elliot Nathan, product development manager at Charcol, says that the problem with multiple agreements in principle is made worse by electronic processing of mortgage applications. Online applications can be rejected automatically because of information the system does not know how to handle."If you are talking to a computer, your application could be kicked back and that would leave a further footprint on your credit file and it affects your credit record," he says. Automated systems, Nathan says, may reject applications that a human underwriter will accept.Buyers who have obtained multiple mortgage agreements in principle can ask the lenders concerned to remove them from their file, but the lender is not obliged to do so. And if a mortgage application is rejected for credit reference reasons, it is worth checking why.

If the cause is multiple credit checks, it might be possible to persuade the lender to disregard these.But Equifax external affairs director, Neil Munro, says that for the homebuyer prevention is most definitely better than cure. Lenders should warn consumers if an agreement in principle will involve a full credit check, and ask for consent.Lenders might not explain, though, whether a search will leave a footprint. This means that homebuyers should be cautious, and only apply for a mortgage agreement when they really need it."If there is a problem, you can raise a query with us or with the lender," he says. "If you feel you were not properly made aware that there would be a search, we would take that up on your behalf."But the financial service industry needs to speed up its steps to resolve the problem. "It does not affect a huge number of people," says Charcol's Nathan "But it is a problem we want to see eradicated.".

The railways will next year finally get back to service levels achieved before the October 2000 Hatfield crash, infrastructure company Network Rail (NR) said today. For example, NR hopes to achieve 10.6 million minutes of delays in 2005-06 compared with the ORR target of 11.3 million minutes.The ORR delay target for 2004-05 had been 12.3 million minutes.Details of the delay figures were given as NR launched its latest business plan. The company said that it had achieved £420 million of efficiency savings.NR chairman Ian McAllister said: "Network Rail is raising the bar on train punctuality. We've made substantial improvements in the last year, and now we want to go even further, even faster. That's why we are making the targets even tougher, ensuring passengers should see improvements in punctuality well ahead of schedule."He went on: "The two million-plus minutes we have taken off delays in the last year is a superb achievement, a testament to the efforts of our 30,000 employees and evidence of a much better working relationship with the train and freight operators."We've managed to beat the tough ORR-set targets by taking maintenance in-house, rolling integrated control centres out across the network and continuing our massive programme of rebuilding the railway.