New development lending in Southwark has halved in a year, and the refinance market that developers rely on to exit those loans has shrunk even faster. Put together with a stock of live loans that is older than the national average, it makes Southwark one of the harder places in England and Wales to be holding a scheme at practical completion right now.
We cut the latest Companies House charge filings, HM Land Registry sales and Southwark Council planning decisions to see where schemes in the borough stand after the first half of 2026. The full dataset, with quarterly charts and a comparison against England and Wales, is in the Southwark development exit report. This briefing sets out what it means for anyone funding or refinancing a scheme in SE1, SE5, SE15 or the rest of the borough.
New lending has halved
Development lenders registered 29 new charges against Southwark sites and developers in the 12 months to June 2026, down from 58 in the year before. That is a fall of 50.0%. Across England and Wales new development charges rose by 11.7% over the same period, so Southwark has moved sharply against the national trend. Of the 56 locations we track with at least 30 development charges in the earlier year, only Reading fell as far.
The number of separate borrowing companies dropped too, from 34 to 19. The first half of 2026 on its own showed 13 new charges against 29 in the first half of 2025. Recent filings are provisional and usually rise as late registrations arrive, but the gap is too wide to be explained by filing delays alone.
Repayments are holding up
Satisfactions tell a steadier story. Lenders filed 20 development charges as satisfied over the year, against 19 in the year before. With new lending falling and repayments flat, the gap between loans written and loans cleared has narrowed sharply: 29 new charges against 20 satisfied, compared with 58 against 19 a year earlier.
Two cautions apply. A charge is a security document rather than a loan balance, so the counts show how many facilities cleared, not how much debt. And satisfactions are often filed months after the loan is actually repaid.
An ageing book of live loans
Of the 234 development charges still live in Southwark at 30 June 2026, 69.2% had been registered more than 24 months earlier. Across England and Wales the figure was 60.6%, so Southwark sits 8.6 points above the national position and 9th highest of the 73 locations we track. Including everything older than 18 months, the share rises to 77.8%.
Most development facilities are written for 18 to 24 months. A charge still live after two years usually sits on a scheme that has overrun, is selling slowly, or is waiting for a refinance that has not yet been arranged.
Exit lending has dropped the furthest
This is the figure that matters most for a developer near completion. Development exit and refinance charges against Southwark borrowers fell to 16 in the 12 months to June 2026, from 34 the year before, a fall of 52.9%. That is the steepest fall of the 34 locations with at least 30 exit charges in the earlier year. Nationally, exit lending rose by 3.4%.
The mix has shifted as well. Bridging lenders accounted for 10 of the 16 exit charges, against 11 of 34 a year earlier, so the borough's exits now lean more heavily on bridging money, which usually costs more than a specialist bank term facility.
Across all property-secured lending in Southwark, specialist lenders took 89.0% of matched charges over the year, close to the national 88.4%. Bridging alone accounted for 35.2%, a high share by national standards.
New-build sales have thinned
Land Registry records new-build sales slowly, so we read them over the latest settled year, August 2024 to July 2025. Southwark recorded 147 new-build sales in that window, down from 291 in the year before. New-build made up 4.4% of all sales, below the national share of 8.3%.
New-build flats sold at a median of £507,500, 9.1% above the £465,000 median for existing flats. A year earlier the gap had been far wider, which reflects a change in the mix of schemes completing as much as any change in prices. For anyone planning an exit, the narrow premium is the point: valuers will lean on resale evidence nearby, and there is little headroom for a new-build price that runs well ahead of it.
Planning: fewer approvals, some large schemes
Southwark Council approved 88 relevant residential applications in the year to 20 September 2026, with 72 still pending. New-build schemes made up 50 of the approvals and conversions 25. Where a unit count was stated, the approvals added 623 units across 41 applications.
The largest included 243 units at Skipton House on London Road, SE1, and 183 at the Rich Industrial Estate on Crimscott Street, SE1. Large consents like these will need development finance over the next two years, at a time when local lending appetite has fallen.
What to take from it
Southwark combines sharply lower new lending, the steepest fall in exit lending we track and a live loan book that is older than average. If you are approaching practical completion, start the exit conversation early, line up resale comparables before the valuation, and price in the possibility that the refinance will come from a bridging lender rather than a term facility. If your scheme is student-led, our Southwark student accommodation development report covers the PBSA pipeline separately.
Sources: Companies House charge register, HM Land Registry Price Paid Data and Southwark Council planning records, analysed by Construction Capital. Period figures for 2026 are provisional. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.