FEARS of a new boom-and-bust cycle in Britain caused by surging house prices are "misplaced", according to a survey of people's moving intentions.

There is no sign of the panic buying and speculation that typified the housing market in the late 1980s, Legal & General (L&G) said yesterday.

The insurer's comments came as Halifax, the biggest lender in Britain, said house prices rose 1 per cent in March, taking annual price rises to 7.2 per cent.

This maintains the strongest run in house prices since the autumn of 1989, and follows last week's announcement by Nationwide - the second-biggest building society - that prices were rising at 9.7 per cent a year after a 1.6 per cent jump in March.

Fears of a boom have been stoked by a sharp rise in house prices and the return of 1980s style "gazumping" in some parts of London and the south-east of England.

L&G acknowledged that most people expected house prices to rise in the next 12 months - 70 per cent against 27 per cent at the same time last year.

But it said there were a number of reasons why the market would remain "orderly", according to the 1,000 people in its survey.

First, the number planning to move in the next 12 months had fallen from 26 per cent last September to 17 per cent.

Mr Neville Walton, L&G's director of financial services, said: "While housing market activity continues to increase, stimulated by the perception that house prices are likely to go on rising, the market remains an orderly one."

The Halifax also said there was "no indication of the boom conditions of the late 1980s". The average house price was £63,334 sterling, some 4.2 per cent below its May, 1989, peak.

The group still expects the recovery to continue, forecasting house price inflation of 7 per cent in the fourth-quarter.

Meanwhile, the British Bankers Association reported yesterday that the leading banks made gross home loans of £2.15 billion sterling in February, up 3 per cent from January. New approvals rose by 10 per cent in value from £1.798 billion to £1.984 billion and by 9 per cent in number from 31,637 to 34,529.

However, seasonally adjusted net lending fell from £806 million in January to £743 million in February.