FTB in London, weird credit "score"

Hi all :)

I am looking at buying a studio early 2014 in London.

I have about £15k saved at the moment and in a year's time I'll likely have about £20k saved.

This should be adequate to put down a 10-15% deposit on a studio in London.

Anyway, for research purposes I performed a credit report search and my "score" was something like 289 :eek:

I noticed a few searches had been performed under my name, one for the new job I accepted and things like that. Anyway...I had made a few silly late payments on mobile phone contracts, overdrafts and eBay account payments between 2007-09 when I was a student and am wondering if this would adversely affect my mortgage application which will be made in 2014?

I've been trawling these forums in search of similar threads, found a few similar ones but nothing this specific.

Basically, would I be best going through a broker for a mortgage as to the high street providers? I don't intend on performing any more credit searches until 2014.

Do mortgage providers/brokers look at your "score" or humanly assess your report by actually looking at it, or is it all done by a computer?!

I currently don't have any loans (bar a £4k student loan), not a CCJ/credit card type of person and don't have anything financed except a contract phone.

I would consider myself pretty "small fry" in terms of the fact that I missed a few payments 4-6 years ago but could this adversely affect my chances of getting a mortgage? Simply by being a careless (and poor!) student at the time?

I'm completely financially solvent, earn 26k and haven't missed a bill payment for years.

Any ideas?

Thanks & regards