Watford business borrowing report
13.7% of Watford's 13,292 trading companies have secured borrowing (1,824 businesses), above the East of England at 13.6%.
Share of trading companies with secured borrowing
What the data says
Bigger and older companies borrow more
Share of trading companies in Watford 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
By company age
Dashed line: East of England overall
Where secured lending is concentrated
The largest sectors in Watford, ranked by the share of companies with a lender's charge.
Other towns in the East of England
Every town with at least 2,000 trading companies registered there.
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DueLead watches every Companies House filing and flags the Watford companies showing signs they need finance: new charges, refinance windows, changes of owner, cash squeezes. Scored and delivered every morning.
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- Trading companies: every active private limited company, LLP and PLC in Companies House's free monthly file of 2026-10-01, leaving out dormant companies, lenders and financial firms, and public bodies. Location is the registered office postcode; towns are the post town.
- Secured borrowing: the company has at least one charge (a mortgage or debenture given to a lender) outstanding or part-satisfied. Unsecured loans, cards and most cash advances don't register a charge, so total borrowing is higher.
- Size comes from the type of accounts last filed: micro-entity, small (total exemption, abridged or small), or medium and large (full, medium or group accounts).
- Late filing: the last accounts filed cover a period that ended more than 21 months before the file date, or a company over 21 months old has filed none.
- New companies were incorporated in the quarter and were still active when the file was taken.
- Lenders: charges registered in the quarter at the companies DueLead tracks, with each chargeholder matched to a register of UK lenders. It's a large sample, not every charge filed, so treat lender shares as indicative.
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.