How the government declared war on the independents

For those still self-employed, the scars of the covid years remain, as historical gaps in their incomes continue to push them away from the credit market.

“They see you’ve had a bad year and straight away it’s no,” said Mr Griffin, who sold his home before the pandemic and has since lived in rented accommodation with his family after repeatedly failing to get a mutual.

While a monthly paycheck may be enough for employees to earn the trust of a lender, the self-employed will typically need to demonstrate two years of regular income to get a mortgage.

David Hollingsworth of broker L&C Mortgages said: “If you can demonstrate a solid income history, all standard rates should be within your reach. But if you can’t, you’ll have to go to a specialized lender and you’ll probably have to pay a higher rate.

Self-employed workers may also be limited in the amount they can borrow compared to an employee. Virgin Money and Halifax lenders both have maximum income loan limits of 5.5 times income, but for the self-employed this is capped at 4.49.

Mark Dyason, broker at Edinburgh Mortgage Advice, said underwriters were currently taking “a lot longer” to look into self-employment cases.

The average rate for a two-year fixed-rate mortgage has more than doubled from 2.3% this time last year to 5.8% today, adding thousands of dollars to borrowers.

The financial statements of Jeremy Hunt and Kwasi Kwarteng could not have been more different, but both have added to the pain of the self-employed: the mini-budget by reducing mortgage affordability and the fall statement by cutting the dividend allocation and flipping up a review of the much maligned IR35 reforms.

The controversial legislation was introduced in 2000 in an attempt to tackle so-called masked work, where workers effectively act as employees but are taxed as contractors – it has created a tax nightmare for businesses and workers.

Since reforms to IR35 in 2017 and 2021, businesses have been tasked with determining a contractor’s tax status, discouraging many from hiring those working through limited liability companies, who say the work it dried up.