http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/a ... care-costs

I can't help thinking that might be a good thing in the main, though there should really be a process for questioning approvals/denials.

7 times? it was a maximum of 4 times web I took out my first mortgage, with our current house, we are on 3 times our combined income and that is tight enough for us, no way I'd want to borrow 7 times my income!

Agreed. I probably could support a X7 mortgage but there's no way in hell I'd sign up for one. The fact people are having to do so to buy a house shows just how utterly screwed up the British housing market is.

I would have to agree with the article where it talks about brokers advising people to strip back spending for three months prior to making their application. That sounds dodgy as hell to me and could certainly be viewed as obtaining money by deception.
I also think that taking childcare costs into account more can only be a good thing - it's not like they're cheap and certainly in the early years they may be one of the more significant outgoings for a family. A bit of a worry that they weren't taken into account much before hand.