Contractor mortgages on a Barclays (Woolwich) mortgage
Where lending to contractors changes the conveyancing position on a Barclays (Woolwich) mortgage, and where it does not.
- Topic
- Contractor mortgages
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
- Handbook
- UK Finance · Part 1 & 2
Part 2 of the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook is amended by lenders without notice. Check the current version before relying on any requirement described here.
What contractor mortgages means here
Lending to borrowers working through fixed-term contracts, limited companies or umbrella arrangements rather than on a permanent employment contract. Panel and conveyancing requirements follow the lender’s standard terms.
The general position on contractor mortgages is the same across the market. What differs is the lender's own requirement, and that sits in Part 2 of the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook rather than in general guidance.
What has to be in place
Conveyancing is largely unchanged
How the borrower’s income is assessed is an underwriting matter. The conveyancing requirements are the lender’s standard ones for the product being taken.
Read the offer’s special conditions
Where a lender has underwritten around a contract, any condition attached to that sits in the special conditions on the offer and has to be satisfied before drawdown.
Limited company borrowers
If the borrower is a company rather than an individual, execution, capacity and any requirement for personal guarantees or independent legal advice all change.
Acting for you and for Barclays (Woolwich) at the same time
On most mortgage matters the same firm acts for the borrower and for Barclays (Woolwich), which means it is following a second set of instructions alongside yours. Those instructions are the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook, and they are published in two parts.
Part 1
The industry-wide half
- Written once and applied to every lender in the scheme, which is why a conveyancer can act on a first matter for a lender they have never dealt with.
- It sets the investigation a firm has to carry out and the terms of the certificate of title it signs at the end of it.
- Amendments are consulted on and published, so a firm can see one coming.
Part 1 is the reason panel work is comparable between lenders at all.
Part 2
Where Barclays (Woolwich) answers for itself
- Every question Part 1 leaves to the lender is answered here, in Barclays (Woolwich)'s own words: indemnity policies, new-build warranties, occupiers, retentions and the rest.
- It can be amended at any time and without notice, which is the whole reason a firm checks it per matter rather than per year.
- It is also where two lenders on the same transaction can want different things.
Nothing on this site reproduces a Part 2 answer. Read the current version before acting on any description of one.
Because Part 2 can be amended without notice, the useful question is how often a given lender amends it. Here is the answer for Barclays (Woolwich).
Part 2 changes have been recorded for Barclays (Woolwich) in every year since 2012. A run that reaches the present is the case for reading the current version rather than working from the last matter, and it is the reason this site monitors Part 2 instead of reprinting it.
Counting the amendments rather than the years: Barclays (Woolwich) has made 691 changes to Part 2 sections since 2017, 104 of them in 2026. One amendment can touch several sections, so this counts section changes rather than distinct sections, and revisions that moved nothing but the document’s own date are left out.
Counted from the Lexsure Part 2 change record supplied on 3 August 2026, which holds the years a lender’s Part 2 was amended rather than what any amendment said. 2026 is a part year, because the extract was taken partway through it. A lender that revises Part 2 often is not a worse lender than one that leaves it alone: what these figures describe is how far a conveyancer can rely on what applied last time, which is why the current version is the one to check.
This site says which Part 2 question holds a lender-specific answer rather than reprinting the answer. A stale copy of a requirement, on a page someone acts on, is worse than no copy.
What to confirm with Barclays (Woolwich) rather than assume
Part 2 of the Handbook carries each lender's own requirements and its overrides of Part 1, and it is amended without notice. These are the points where the answer is Barclays (Woolwich)'s rather than general practice:
- Any special condition on the mortgage offer and what evidence discharges it
- Whether the borrower is contracting personally or through a company
We do not reproduce Part 2 here. It is lender-specific, it changes without notice, and a stale copy of it on a page a conveyancer relies on is worse than no copy at all. LM04 tracks those changes.
Acting on this lender’s instructions
Panel membership decides whether a firm can act at all. LenderPanel maintains the directory borrowers search when choosing a conveyancer, including for Barclays (Woolwich).