Suffolk's development lending and its exit lending moved in opposite directions over the past year. Developers took on far more development debt, while the number of exit loans from bridging lenders and specialist banks fell. For anyone whose build facility runs out in the next year or two, that gap is worth understanding early.
We analysed Companies House charges, HM Land Registry sales and council planning records for Suffolk's five local authority areas, covering the 12 months to 30 June 2026. The detailed tables and national comparison are in the Suffolk development exit report. Here we focus on what the figures mean for a developer thinking about an exit bridge.
The year in four numbers
- Development charges: 100, up 78.6% on 56 the year before, against a national rise of 11.7%.
- Exit lending charges: 36, down 21.7% on 46, while the national count rose 3.4%.
- New-build share of settled sales: 11.8%, against 8.3% nationally.
- Repayments per new development charge: 0.24, against 0.40 nationally.
A charge is the security document a lender files at Companies House when it lends against a company's property. We count charges, so these are numbers of loans rather than amounts.
Borrowing concentrated in late 2025
Much of Suffolk's increase arrived in a single quarter. Lenders registered 45 development charges in the final quarter of 2025, the highest quarterly figure in our series back to 2022 and more than double the 19 of the quarter before. The 100 charges over the year went to 46 borrowers, so a number of developers took several charges each.
The first half of 2026 was calmer but still up, at 36 charges against 29 a year earlier. Development facilities are commonly written for around 18 to 24 months, so loans taken in late 2025 on typical terms will reach their end dates during 2027.
Repayments have not kept up
Only 24 development charges were marked satisfied in the year, barely changed from 23. Against 100 new charges that gives 0.24 repayments per new loan, well below the national 0.40. Repayments are often filed late, so recent figures are provisional and will probably rise, but the gap is wide.
At 30 June 2026, 338 development charges were live. 58.6% were more than 24 months old, slightly under the national 60.6%, and 64.5% were older than 18 months. Suffolk's book is younger than average today. The concern is what happens as the recent wave of borrowing ages.
Exit lending went the other way
Bridging lenders and specialist banks registered 36 charges against Suffolk companies whose business is developing or building homes, down from 46. 26 developers took them, 20 from bridging lenders and 16 from specialist banks. The first half of 2026 brought 15 exit charges against 22, a fall of 31.8%, and the second quarter of 2026 recorded just 4, the lowest quarter since early 2024.
Fewer exit loans in a year with many more development loans does not mean exit finance is unavailable. It does mean that developers here have been using it less, and that a case prepared well ahead of the facility end date is likely to be better placed than one put together in the final weeks.
Across all property lending in the county, specialist lenders held 86.6% of charges we can match to a lender type, against 88.4% nationally. Bridging lenders accounted for 26.6% and mainstream banks for 13.4%.
A strong new-homes market
Suffolk's sales evidence is the brightest part of the picture. Land Registry registers new-build sales late, so we use the latest settled year, 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025. New-build sales reached 1,455, up 12.4% on the year before, while the national count fell 6.1%.
New-build houses sold at a median of £370,000, 27.6% above existing houses at £289,972. New-build flats, a much smaller market with 86 sales, sold at a median of £236,000, 56.3% above existing flats at £151,000. Across all homes, 11,726 sales were recorded in the 12 months to January 2026, 4.1% more than the year before.
Rising new-build volume and a clear house premium give an exit lender concrete evidence that completed units in the county sell.
Where the next schemes are
Three councils are in our planning data: Babergh and Mid Suffolk, East Suffolk and West Suffolk. Planning data for Ipswich is not yet in the dataset. Between 20 September 2025 and 20 September 2026 the covered councils approved 1,454 relevant applications, with 487 pending. 162 approvals were for new build and 238 for conversions, and the 383 approvals that state a unit count total 3,440 homes.
The largest approvals include 375 homes on Land off Station Road, Lakenheath, a 300-home mixed-use scheme on Land North of Acorn Way, Manor Wood, Red Lodge, and 269 homes at Chilton Woods, Land North of Woodhall Business Park, Sudbury. Company formation adds to the pipeline: 687 property and development SPVs were incorporated in the year, up 15.7% against 7.0% nationally.
Our view for Suffolk developers
If you took a development facility in the recent surge, it is sensible to plan the exit now rather than in the last quarter of the term. We can review your scheme, your sales evidence and your timetable, and explain how development exit bridging could fit.
Terms always depend on the individual scheme, the quality of its sales evidence and the borrower, and we cannot guarantee that a facility will be available. Bridging for business and investment purposes is unregulated. A loan secured on a home that the borrower or a family member lives in may be regulated, and in that case we would refer you to an authorised firm.
Data: Companies House charge register and incorporations, HM Land Registry Price Paid Data and council planning records, analysed by Construction Capital. Lenders are grouped by type, never named. Charge counts measure loans registered and repaid, not their value, and recent repayment data is provisional.