UK report /East of England /Luton
DueLead Pulse · Q3 2026

Luton business borrowing report

9.9% of Luton's 16,117 trading companies have secured borrowing (1,596 businesses), below the East of England at 13.6%.

Covers 2026-07-01 to 2026-09-30 · Companies House file of 2026-10-01 · Free to cite with a link

Share of trading companies with secured borrowing

East of England
13.6%
355,968 companies · 11th of 12
12.3%17.4%
16.1k
Trading companies
16,117
9.9%
With secured borrowing
-3.7 pts vs region
4.1k
Live charges registered
2.6 per borrower
1k
New companies in Q3 2026
still trading at quarter end
4.3%
Late filing accounts
691 companies
In brief

What the data says

01Real estate & lettings is the most secured-borrowing sector here: 45% of its 2,106 companies have a lender's charge.
021,020 new companies started in Luton in Q3 2026, and 691 (4.3%) are late filing accounts.
Who borrows

Bigger and older companies borrow more

Share of trading companies in Luton with at least one outstanding charge, by size (from the accounts they file) and by age.

By company size

Dashed line: East of England overall

Micro
9.9%
Small
22.0%
Medium & large
50.7%
No accounts yet
2.5%

By company age

Dashed line: East of England overall

0-2 years
3.0%
2-5 years
10.0%
5-10 years
13.2%
10-20 years
15.0%
20+ years
38.9%
By sector

Where secured lending is concentrated

The largest sectors in Luton, ranked by the share of companies with a lender's charge.

Real estate & lettings
44.8%
Business support services
5.7%
Professional services
3.8%
Construction & trades
3.7%
Restaurants, pubs & cafes
3.4%
Retail
2.9%
Haulage & logistics
2.0%
Tech, media & telecoms
1.9%
Share with secured borrowingAll sectors in Luton (9.9%)
Town reports

Other towns in the East of England

Every town with at least 2,000 trading companies registered there.

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How we built this report

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. You're welcome to quote and chart these figures with a link to this page.