For years my husband and I have been self-employed and for various reasons, having a family, mortgage under-writers, lenders, banks, suffering losses, lets not mention Covid (mentioned!), being able to come away from renting, and buy our own home,  felt utterly impossible. And we know, we aren't alone.

I am thrilled to say, that we did finally achieve this dream last year, and for the first time we feel secure. We are no longer at the mercy of management agents and landlords who do or don't decide on the maintenance issues, or if we are allowed to live another year near our children's school. We have colour on our walls.

For 9 years we paid our rent, every month. For 9 years I would complete mortgage calculators to see what mortgage payments would likely be if only we could get through a mortgage application successfully - the result every single time was that a mortgage would be CHEAPER  than the rent. Yet, we couldn’t  get over "The Hurdle"

What is "The Hurdle"? Well for those of you who are employed, when you apply for a mortgage, you are usually financially referenced with your employer and are requested to send 3 months payslips - 3 pieces of paper! For the Self-Employed, we are requested to send 2-3 YEARS of SA302's and all the accountant documentation that goes with that. That is a dossier of information. A BOOK - not 3 bits of paper, aprox 3000% more paperwork, for the same product.

Now with the dossiers, during the process of the application, lenders then ask for updated documents, because it takes them so long, months, to review our applications that documents then go out of date. We soul search, we drive, text, call and letter we produce more documents and we send them off, and we wait. We wait again. Now the interest rates have moved and then what was possible, once again becomes impossible. The lenders come back, sorry we can't help, TRY AGAIN NEXT YEAR! And so the cycle of waiting continues....

Because rather that a month, they always want a fresh year of accounts. So the self-employed wait another year, and try "The Hurdle" again.

There are 4.39 million of us are self-employed in the country and 4.6 million of the UK population, are renting! Many who make their rent every month, who have the deposit, who have the credit file, but the lenders ask for 3000% more documentation that the employed because we are considered as "unreliable income". How is this unreliable? While the employed produce 3 payslips and when all is done and dusted, can offer their employers 1 months notice and walk away from the job.

PLEASE SIGN this petition. Allow the Self-Employed to be treated equally to the employed. Allow them to come out of rented accommodation and buy their own homes, because WE ARE RELIABLE, we work damn hard and deserve to be treated the same as our respective peers.

And consider, if 4.39 million are self-employed and 4.6 million are renting, how much, much needed rental accommodation could be freed by removing "The Hurdle" and allowing the self-employed to finally buy their own Home.