TENANTS surviving from month to month face homelessness unless the Government unveils a relief package aimed at helping them cope, a campaigner has claimed.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a bumper £330 billion package to help businesses and mortgage holders escape the financial fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mortgage lenders will offer payment holidays of up to three months for borrowers who face money trouble due to the virus.

Jack Adams, director of Colchester-based mortgage brokers We Are Mortgages, said the measures are “very welcome”.

“It is definitely a good thing, for people who might be struggling it allows them to not default on their mortgage and still live in their house,” he said.

“For certain people in certain industries, who might be worrying about their wage, to have their biggest single outgoing reduced to zero will help in the short term.

“If you don’t need the mortgage holiday, our advice would be not to take it as the payments will be added on later.

“It could extend your mortgage term by an extra two months.

“It is a real positive step because lenders aren’t always forthcoming with this sort of stuff, so it is great the Government has given these instructions and engineered something on such a large scale to help people.”

Mr Adams said the mortgage repayment respite coupled with a reduction in the base interest rate would boost spending.

“The new chancellor seems clued up. He has a background as an economist and he has got the experience to back this up,” he said.

“Coupled with the base rate going down to 0.25 per cent this is also a massive help for borrowers because it boosts spending.

“All borrowing rates are decided by the base rate which has been at 0.75 per cent, and the Bank of England was talking of reducing it before the virus hit the UK.

“This is a drop to where they should be, it encourages spending and will help to keep the economy going.”

People who rent still face uncertainty following the chancellor’s announcement.

Yesterday, business secretary Alok Sharma said further measures aimed at helping employees and renters would be announced “very soon”.

Simon Collyer, founder of the Association of Pension and Benefits Claimants, said people living from pay day to pay day face homelessness.

“In many cases if people don’t have their rent paid, if they are not working as they normally would, they will end up on the streets,” he said.

“People who rent typically won’t have the same choices available to them, it’s pay month by month or leave.”

The Chancellor hopes to help businesses by making available £330 billion in loans - equivalent to 15 per cent of GDP - from next week.

These loans will help businesses pay for supplies, rent and salaries.

An extended business rates relief will be put in place.

David Burch, director of policy for Essex Chambers of Commerce, anticipates the Government taking further steps to help individual consumers.

“It is a step in the right direction,” he said.

“Look at the photos coming out of London of empty streets and tubes, this will trickle out to places like Colchester as well.

“As a country we are still getting to grips with the reality of this, let alone the impact.

“I am sure there will be businesses which will survive, but there will be some which close. It will be the smaller businesses which get hit hardest and the rates holiday is very welcome.

“We’ve got manufacturing companies and other sectors affected by this and it would appear they are still going to have to pay these rates.

“The Government may still look at other things such as giving people VAT holidays and tax holidays.”