The refinancing wall, by area
14,675 UK companies sit inside an estimated 2026 to 2028 refinancing window, counted from the Companies House register of charges as at 2026-07-07. Below, that count cut to 10 postcode areas across the industrial heartland, with each area’s sector mix, incumbent lenders and its own peak quarter.
Ten postcode areas, 2,412 companies inside a window between them.
Each area page carries its own count, the split by sector, the banking groups holding the in-window paper, and the quarter in which that area is busiest. The areas are grouped here by the regional patch they sit in.
West Midlands
- Birmingham(B)529 in window · peaks Q2 2027
- Stoke-on-Trent(ST)164 in window · peaks Q4 2026
- Shrewsbury(SY)109 in window · peaks Q2 2027
Yorkshire
- Sheffield(S)276 in window · peaks Q2 2027
- Leeds(LS)272 in window · peaks Q2 2027
- Bradford(BD)121 in window · peaks Q4 2026
East Midlands
- Nottingham(NG)228 in window · peaks Q1 2027
- Derby(DE)174 in window · peaks Q4 2026
North West
- Manchester(M)380 in window · peaks Q2 2027
- Liverpool(L)159 in window · peaks Q1 2027
The wall does not arrive everywhere at once.
Nationally the peak quarter is Q2 2027, but 5 of these 10 areas peak earlier: Nottingham in Q1 2027, Derby in Q4 2026, Stoke-on-Trent in Q4 2026, Liverpool in Q1 2027, Bradford in Q4 2026. That gap is worth something. A borrower reaching a refinancing before the national peak meets credit committees while their capacity for the year is still uncommitted.
What these numbers are, and are not.
The register records the creation date of every charge but never a maturity date and never an amount. An estimated window is the creation date plus a customary tenor for the charge type and holder, with a half-width of one to one and a half years, and one primary window per company. These are estimates, never reported maturities. The full method sits on the UK refinancing wall reference page, the dated reading in the refi wall, counted, and the tables are downloadable from example work.
Counts are FLOORS from a prioritised sample (83,957 scored companies drawn from a ~1.8m-company ICP universe; hydration was rate-limited and prioritised), one primary facility window per company, three ICP sector groups only. Sector/region SHARES reflect pipeline composition, not the UK market distribution.
Only the industrial heartland carries a postcode area in this data, so London and the rest of the UK have no area pages here rather than a suppressed count. An area is published only where at least 100 companies sit inside a window, which is why some heartland areas are absent. Figures are from Companies House register of charges, 2026-07-07 (RUN-REPORT.md); CH bulk snapshot 2026-07-01. Journalists are welcome to use them with attribution; the citation string is on the press page.