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Loretta Minghella, chief executive of the FSCS, said the number of claims had increased from seven in 2006-2007 to 35 in the last financial year - an increase of 400 per cent.

Ms Minghella said despite the difficult market climate the FSCS was not predicting an increase in claims this year but admitted that as high loan-to-value customers struggle to find new deals the scheme could receive more complaints about intermediaries that failed to survive in the current economic climate.

Ms Minghella said it was possible there could be a delayed influx and this was likely to come from those who had borrowed at high loan-to-values.

She said: "I think what may emerge over the year to come is a change in that profile because we have seen a lot of reporting of people borrowing more than they should have borrowed and questions are going to arise as to what extent any mortgage adviser that has not survived in this market has been responsible for any poor advice in relation to that.

"If there has been poor advice leading to loss and the mortgage adviser has gone bust, if it is an authorised mortgage adviser those bills and claims will come here and we will settle them and will need to get the money back from the industry.

"So it would be unsurprising to me if we saw an upturn but we are pulling the forcecast for next year together."

Ms Minghella also said the more difficult economic climate could mean those who previously would not have bothered to look around for redress may now take the time to make a claim.

She said: "You could imagine quite reasonably that we would have seen a huge upturn in work as right across the industry there have been signs of strain and difficulty.

"But that is not what we predicted when we set our forecast for this year we are currently in and that is not what we have seen."

She said the compensation scheme had received fewer than expected claims for mortgage advisers since the FSCS catchment was extended to include them in 2004.

Ms Minghella said: "I think everyone expected there to be some bad apples that would come to the top of the barrel in the first year or two and the potential bill for the scheme could be quite significant but that is not what occurred at all.

"Last year we had fewer than 100 claims in the mortgage area."