tt lady:

I'm only guessing the reasons but I could understand why lenders aren't willing to lend for consolidation of credit cards. They will think that you will end up with both credit cards and the loan in a couple of years - if you look on some of the other forums you will find lots of people who are in that position - which makes recovery of their loan riskier. Consolidating the loan and spreading it over a long period could end up with you paying more interest in the long term - 5% for 25 years is much more than 20+% for a couple.

With a joint salary of £45k and no mortgage payments to make you should be able to get the credit cards down by quite a bit of belt tightening and careful budgeting. You might stand a better chance if you can go into your bank with a couple of months of debt reduction in place and a sensible budget which you've kept to.

Hi again

Thanks for the reply - we've had a good chat to them again today and they are really going out of their way to get us a solution that works for all parties - so we're getting there.

:-)