In reply to henwardian:
Hi Henward,
It's a frustrating system to get through. I never did get a straight answer on what the credit requirement was. They don't have enough people who know the system handling calls, so most of the time when you call their helpline you speak to an 'overflow' call centre who just say they'll get someone to call you back.
When I put in our application it failed on the credit check, according to the credit agency we were "good" as opposed to "excellent", I don't remember the exact numbers. The things that it was flagging was that we weren't yet on the electoral role and had a high credit card usage at that point, two things that surely must be pretty common when you've just moved house and are renovating it!
I struggled to get through to anyone on the phone who knew what to do and didn't get any response to emails, but by just keeping on calling back I eventually spoke to someone who could send me an appeals form. This asked for employment details and a break down of our spending, along with bank statements. After that we got approved for the funding, that application process took two and a bit months all together. It then took another two months for them to actually pay the deposit payment for the first bit of work.
Hope that's useful and not too daunting,
Tom
Post edited at 23:46