Mortgage Readiness Pack

Why a pack, not just a calculator

The free prison officer mortgage calculator shows what changes the answer: which parts of your pay might be counted and how much borrowing is at stake. What it cannot do is help you show your income properly. A prison officer's pay has an unusual shape. Base pay and the 20% unsocial hours allowance are part of the published salary. Committed extra hours (39 or 41-hour contracts) are part of the contract. Payment Plus (£23 an hour from 1 April 2026) is paid for specific duties and is not guaranteed or pensionable. Market supplements of £1,500 to £3,500 a year at 18 named prisons are non-pensionable and reviewed annually.

An adviser or lender will want to understand that shape quickly. The pack is designed to get you there: your income broken into components, with the evidence that supports each one.

The evidence pack in practice

You enter what you received in each of the last 12 months. The pack calculates your 12-month average, your latest 3-month average and the number of months in which you had extra pay. Seeing that a steady pattern exists, or that it is patchy, is useful before you walk into a meeting. The income table then describes each element in plain terms (what it is, whether it is contracted or variable, and what documents to bring).

The checklist covers the documents commonly requested: recent payslips, the latest P60, an employment contract or HR letter confirming grade, hours and allowances, bank statements, proof of identity and address, the source of your deposit, a credit report you have checked and details of debts and commitments. Your lender will tell you exactly what they need.

Scenarios that show what is at stake

The scenarios tab shows maximum illustrative borrowing for four ways of counting your income at 4, 4.5 and 5 times. For a National Band 3 officer on the top pay point of a 37-hour contract doing 8 hours of Payment Plus a month, the range at 4.5 times runs from about £165,500 (contracted pay only) to about £175,400 (everything counted), a difference of about £10,000. The rate table shows what the same loan costs a month between 3% and 8%, with each payment as a share of take-home pay, and the deposit grid shows how loan-to-value and stamp duty move with the deposit.

These are illustrations from numbers you control. They help you decide which questions are worth asking, not what you will be offered.

Adviser questions with your numbers

A good conversation with an adviser starts with specific questions. The pack writes twelve for you, for example how many months of payslips are needed to count Payment Plus and in what proportion, how a market supplement is treated if it is reduced, whether a London zone or a 39 or 41-hour contract changes how pay is treated, which stress rate is used and what happens to an offer if overtime falls after you apply.

What the free calculator already gives you

The free mortgage calculator splits your pay into components, lets you choose how much of each a lender might count, and shows illustrative borrowing, price range, monthly and stressed payments and a stamp duty estimate, with one free AI answer. The pack builds on that with evidence, scenarios and preparation.

How the pack fits with the other tools

If you are still building a deposit, start with the free overtime to deposit calculator, which shows how many extra Payment Plus hours it takes to reach your target and what each hour is worth after tax. Then use the pack to record the history of those hours. If you are weighing a move to a prison that pays a market supplement or a London zone differential, the commute cost calculator shows what the journey takes out of your take-home pay.

The pack is also a good companion to a conversation with a regulated adviser: it does the organising so the time with the adviser goes on advice.

Who should not buy it

• Anyone who wants to know exactly what a particular lender will offer. Only the lender or an adviser can tell you.
• Anyone who only wants a quick borrowing estimate. The free calculator covers that.
• Anyone who wants regulated advice. This is educational and does not replace it.

Price, refund and access

£9.99, one payment, no subscription, with a 14-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked: email hello@prisonofficerpay.co.uk within 14 days of buying. You can buy without an account. Creating one afterwards is optional. See the refund policy. If you are planning to save for a deposit with extra hours, try the free overtime to deposit calculator.