But despite the decline, February’s approvals were 34% higher than the same month a year before.

Mark Harris, chief executive of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, said: “While transactions are much higher than a year ago across most of the country they are still below pre-recession levels so the recovery has some way to go.”

Approvals for remortgages followed a similar negative trend dropping from 35,700 approvals in January to 33,900.

But year-on-year remortgage approvals were up 20% from 28,300.

In February gross secured lending rose to £17.8bn which represented a 1.6% growth rate over the last three months.

But product pricing remained largely unchanged. Two-year fixed rates have remained stable with some small uptick on five-year fixes.

Harris said: “‘Five-year fixes have started to edge up partly as a result of higher swap rates which have doubled in the past year.

“However there are still five-year deals pegged at around 3% for those with sizeable deposits which are excellent value.”