* Mortgage approvals stabilise at historically low levels
* No QE boost to corporate and household money supply
* UK personal insolvencies at record high in Q1
* Pace of contraction in UK manufacturing sector slows
By Christina Fincher and Matt Falloon
LONDON, May 1 (Reuters) - British mortgage lending grew much less than expected in March, home loan approvals remained weak and there was little sign the extra cash being pumped into the system by the Bank of England was reaching households and firms.
Separate figures on Friday showed nearly 5,000 companies in England and Wales went into liquidation and a record number of people succumbed to insolvency in the first three months of the year as the recession continued to bite.
The central bank began a three-month asset-buying programme in early March, after slashing interest rates to a record low of 0.5 percent. It is already more than halfway through its 75 billion pound scheme and must soon decide whether to extend it.
The BoE holds its monthly policy meeting next week and its deliberations will be informed by soon-to-be-published quarterly inflation and growth forecasts. Policymakers are likely to give a progress update on the quantitative easing programme, but it is uncertain whether they will announce an extension at this stage.
The only bright spot in Friday's raft of data was evidence that British manufacturers were finally beginning to benefit from the weakness of the pound.
A survey of purchasing managers showed export orders jumped last month as the manufacturing sector contracted at its slowest pace in eight months.
"The rebound in new orders was encouraging but the other figures were largely disappointing," said George Buckley, chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank.
"The insolvency numbers were poor, mortgage approvals are just consolidating at low levels and there is no evidence yet that shows quantitative easing is working."
BOOM TO BUST
Britain's Insolvency Service said personal insolvencies leapt 19 percent on the year to 29,774, the highest since records began in 1960.
There have been some tentative signs of an improvement in the economy following the sharpest drop in output since 1979 at the start of this year, but analysts say many more businesses and individuals are bound to go bust this year.
"As company insolvencies typically lag behind overall economic performance, it is safe to say that we haven't seen the worst," said Malcolm Shierson, Partner at Grant Thornton's Recovery and Reorganisation practice.
David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, urged the Bank of England to be more aggressive in pumping money into the economy.
"The Monetary Policy Committee's asset purchase programme has not been very effective so far," he said.
"Yields on gilts are still too high and the growth of money held by industrial and commercial companies is still too weak."
Figures from the Bank of England showed broad money supply in the non-financial corporate sector shrank by 1.7 percent on the month and by 2.1 percent on the year.
Annual money supply growth to this sector and households slipped to 2.5 percent in March, its weakest since records began in 1998.
"Core money growth remains weak and bank assets are still falling," said Michael Saunders, chief UK economist at Citi.
Mortgage lending grew by 757 million pounds in March, less than half the 1.6 billion pound rise forecast, while approvals for home loans nudged up to 39,230, a 10-month high but still only a third of levels typically seen in 2007.
(Additional reporting by Fiona Shaikh; editing by Stephen Nisbet)