Will post more on my experience of buying a flat at some point, but just wanted to share a link I found particularly useful in the beginning when trying to understand how it all worked:
The Home Buying Process at The Motley Fool, a site I found useful for other tips and information along the way as well.
There are actually quite a lot of these online guides about, please feel free to recommend any others you found useful in the comments.
Fixing It Up 