Owning your own home

on that - I stopped into the estate agent a while ago and the mortgage broker, who was on the phone, waved at me and said "we need to talk! it's about the life insurance! I'll call you!" I looked kinda quizzical and left. haven't spoken to him since. I vaguely remember he mentioned life insurance to cover the mortgage repayments if one of us karks it, but it's not compulsory is it?
my other half and I both have pensions with "death in service" payouts, so we figure that would cover it, and we could borrow money from parents/siblings in the short term if we needed to.

Most lenders insist on it, especially with an endowment mortgage. They want to be paid if you die.
For a repayment you usually get a "decreasing term life assurance" policy, which pays off the mortgage and only the mortgage. Quite cheap.
You might have a death in service benefit that will cover it, but most mortgages are in the hundreds of thousands and most death in service payments are in the tens.