If you're a homeowner, there's a good chance you'll have benefited from the low base rate (the rate which is set by the Bank of England and which influences mortgage costs). After all, it's been down at 0.5% since 5th March 2009, and millions of mortgage holders have seen the monthly cost of repaying their mortgage drop to levels they couldn't have expected a few years ago.

However, as they say, 'What goes down must come up'. The base rate can't stay so low forever - and what happens when it goes up again?

People on fixed-rate mortgages, of course, won't be affected until they come to look for a new mortgage, or reach the end of their fixed-rate term. But for anyone with a tracker or SVR (Standard Variable Rate) mortgage, it's a much more immediate issue.

One thing that's particularly worrying is the thought that many people have survived the recession pretty much unscathed because their mortgage payments have dropped. In many cases, their income has fallen, but the reduced cost of servicing their mortgage has given them the help they needed, reducing the monthly cost of staying on top of their financial commitments.

If the base rate goes up before people in that situation have started earning more, many of them could find themselves in trouble.

Could debt management help?

Click here for more information on debt management

In an ideal world, people would simply repay all the debts they've taken on in the way they agreed to when they took them on. But life doesn't always work out like that. Anyone's situation can change over time, and the costs they could afford last year won't necessarily be affordable next year. Their income may drop, or their essential expenditure (gas bills, mortgage bills, petrol costs, etc.) may rise.

If that happens to someone who's carrying unsecured debts - and it 'pushes them over the edge' financially - it doesn't mean insolvency is the only option, as some might expect. Their lenders may well allow them to repay their unsecured debts more slowly, reducing the size of each monthly payment to an affordable level.

This is how a professional debt management plan works - the borrower asks a debt management company to talk to their unsecured lenders on their behalf. They'll explain their financial situation (what they owe, what they earn, what they spend, etc.) to their debt management representative, who'll then be able to calculate what they can realistically afford every month after they've taken their mortgage costs and other essential expenditure into account.

If it looks like debt management is the best way forward (and the borrower agrees to it), they'll call the borrower's unsecured lenders and ask them if they'd accept 'pro rata' payments - a percentage of the borrower's available monthly income that's relative to the amount they owe each lender.

If the lenders agree, the borrower can start making those reduced payments. This can continue until the debt's been paid off, or until their financial situation has improved enough for them to start making larger payments towards their unsecured debts again. And if their situation deteriorates further when the debt management plan is in progress, their representative may be able to negotiate further changes to their repayment plan, to keep their monthly payments at a level they can afford.