Frustration is the only way to sum up my week....interspersed with a visit from a lovely friend!
I am trying to raise the finance to go ahead with my expansion plans.....
The good old British Gov have bailed and bailed out the banks and this week announced help for small businesses by underwriting the risks of banks lending them money..........sounded great, looks great.....in theory!
However they would not play ball as they would only lend 30% of the finance needed and then only if I put in 70%.....but the whole point of borrowing is because you do not have the reddies.....is it not?!
So we have decided to do a remortgage on our house to raise the bit needed to invest and take the business forward.....not a huge risk to us as we only wanted a small amount.....
Fine said the morgage lender to our shock.....but urmm well oh.....oh well actually eventually NO!
Back to the drawing board.....
Mortgage brokers say......don't worry we will find you a mortgage!......and they did.....and I found a great unit and said yes to it.....and the paperwork for the mortgage arrived and I thought yipee.....
And then the phone went and the mortgage company said.....no....apparently there was a problem....I keep sheep!!!!! 8-o
WHAT the bleep bleep bleep has that got to do with it I ask dumbfounded?
Ah umm well that means you are a farm and we don't do agricultural mortgages!
No.....we are residential, we are and all ways have been residential......we just have 9 acres.
But you keep sheep AND pigs......so you ARE a farm........
NO we are residential......this property is NOT a registered farm business!
Oh yes you are oh no we are not.......it was sounding like a pantomime!
But urmm you have a countryside management business there too.....perhaps you are commercial premesis......where do you keep your heavy plant?

At this point i was beginning to think it was surreal......how did they know I had sheep.....and how many AND the fact that I'd just imported one from France AND that Pete has a tree surgery arm to his countryside management business???? And more worrying were mentioning pictures of me dyeing wool in horror of horrors my kitchen!
FROM THIS BLOG!!!! and my and Petes websites!!!

Big brother is certainly watching! I had no idea that underwriters spent hours investigating their mortgage application clients websites to try and 'catch' them lying!!!
I am horrified!

So eventually it was decided we apparently were not residential because our garden was more than 60% of our total plot, we were not agricultural because we just kept sheep for pleasure and were not commercial as we did not have either heavy plant on the premesis not was my kitchen a dye factory.....that point we ran out of options and became unique!
So we are still trying.....
AND for the benefit of any underwriters reading this I have contacted the BBC and they are very interested in your activities!