Contractor mortgages on a Kensington Mortgages mortgage
Where lending to contractors changes the conveyancing position on a Kensington Mortgages 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.
Two things decide how contractor mortgages goes: the general law, which is settled, and the lender's requirement, which is not, and which the lender can change between the offer and completion.
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.
Part 1, Part 2, and Kensington Mortgages's own answers
One document sets out what a conveyancer has to do before Kensington Mortgages releases the money, and it is written in two halves: an industry-wide part and a part the lender writes itself. Almost every surprising request on a mortgage file traces back to one of them.
Part 1
The settled half
- A single document covering what has to be investigated on any mortgage matter, and what has to be reported back before funds are released.
- It moves slowly and in public, so a change to it is news rather than a surprise.
Knowing Part 1 tells a conveyancer how the work is done, not what this particular lender wants.
Part 2
The half Kensington Mortgages controls
- Kensington Mortgages sets its own position here on the points Part 1 hands to it, and can revise that position whenever it decides to.
- A requirement that applied on the last matter may not apply on this one, and there is no notice period in which to notice.
This is the half worth checking on the day rather than remembering.
A conveyancer who acted on a Kensington Mortgages matter last year may or may not be working from current requirements. The years below are what decides that.
Part 2 changes have been recorded for Kensington Mortgages in every year since 2009. 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: Kensington Mortgages has made 1,060 changes to Part 2 sections since 2017, 2 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 Kensington Mortgages 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 Kensington Mortgages'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 Kensington Mortgages.