Selling stocks & shares ISA and paying into cash ISA

TCA

Echoing what some said above, just sell the stocks within the S&S ISA (not closing the ISA) and then transfer the old ISA (containing cash) to a new cash ISA. The new rules allow for transfer of a S&S ISA to a cash ISA, so as long as the new cash ISA allows for transfers-in you'd be fine. I don't know if transferring as cash is any quicker but you wouldn't be losing out on much given cash ISA rates aren't that great and you'd still have the current year's £15k allowance if you haven't used it already.

BillG100

Thanks for the explanations and suggestions! The best way forward for me seems to be selling x% of my Stocks and Shares ISA and then holding it in a cash reserve (cash pot as codetown called it) before going through the formal transfer process to a cash ISA.

In more general terms the reason I want to lock in some of the gains is because they will be used to pay off a BTL interest only mortgage. Whether there's still value in equities is obviously a more subjective discussion, but I'm very doubtful given that eastern Europe and the Middle East are going up in smoke, the Eurozone is stuck in depression, and the US and UK are floating on a sea of debt! Oh and that's all before getting on to China's problems....