Thanks again for your advice mooreaz.

I would actually be fine with making monthly deposits of £100 in addition to the lump sum that I have ready to put.......somewhere! So apologies if my original post was misleading against this.

So I am confident that if this route was appropriate I wouldn't touch any of the funds within the 12 months.

With interest that is applied annually, is it better to find one that is applied on a monthly basis instead?
Am I right in thinking that I wouldn't get 10% on every payment, and I would in fact get around £59.93 interest if I was to pay £100 per month. As payment one would be in the account for 12 months earning the full 10%, the 2nd payment (month 2) is only there for 11 months so gets 11/12ths of the annual interest rate and so on.

Thinking about it all is even a chore in itself!!

Cheers.