Changes to our criteria*

From Thursday 19 October, you’ll no longer need to deduct or validate SEISS grants for self employed applicants.

Please visit the Self employed Hub for the updated criteria.

We now also accept Scottish Child Payments (SCP) as a form of other income. SCP can be keyed under Child Benefit.

Please visit our Treatment of other income and Verification of other income pages for full details.

From Friday 13 October, we can now lend to age 75 without proof of anticipated pension income if an applicant has more than 10 years until retirement.

Applicants will only need to show they're paying into a private pension.

Please visit our Lending into retirement page for full details.

From Tuesday 1 August, we can lend without an EWS1 if the flat/block has approved government backed or developer funding for the cladding/external wall system repairs.​

Let our Application Processing Team know on submission, and they’ll complete internal checks to confirm this.​

There may still be times when further documentation is required, so we’ve also updated the guidance on our criteria pages on the different scenarios of when this may be the case.

Please visit the External Wall System (EWS1) process page for more information.

From Thursday 13 July, we’ve made the following improvements to our lending criteria.

Maximum loan to income

• We’ve updated our maximum loan to income multiples for employed customers earning more than £100,000 per application to 5.50 times income (< 85% LTV) and 4.49 times income (> 85% LTV). See the table below for full LTI details.

*Where one or more applicants are self employed, the maximum LTI is restricted to 4.49 times income

New Build maximum loan to value

• We've increased the maximum LTV for New Build main residence houses and bungalows from 85% to 90% (subject to credit score).

Pipeline applications and DIPs

• Maximum loan to income changes – Cases started before 13 July will benefit from this change, should the application be amended, and the higher income multiple be required.
• New Build maximum loan to value changes – Cases started before 13 July won’t be impacted by this change. Pipeline cases where you would like to increase the LTV to >85% will need to be resubmitted as a new application.

From 7 March 2023, we’ve made the following changes to our lending criteria:

 Buy to Let stress rate changes

• We’ve reduced our Buy to Let stress rates. Please see the table below for more information.

 Buy to Let mortgages in the background

• We've reduced the stress rate used for background Buy to Let mortgages on Residential applications from 7.00% to 6.50%.