Portsmouth and south Hampshire

Business loans and finance in Portsmouth

Construction is Portsmouth's biggest business sector by count, 1,290 of the city's 6,020 registered enterprises (ONS, March 2025), and a builder's funding problem is usually plant, cash flow between valuations or both. Asset finance can fund plant and invoice finance the gap between valuations, and lenders on our panel write both. Enquiries run from £10,000 upwards.

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Baked goods at a cafe counter.

Alex BeardsleyFounder & Director

Updated 21 September 20268 min read

Business loans in Portsmouth

A Portsmouth enquiry usually arrives as one of three things: a term loan for a contractor or a marine supplier, plant or vehicle finance, or an invoice facility for a firm waiting on the dockyard supply chain. We act as a commercial finance broker, and the lender you go with decides. We will receive commission from lenders. On some cases we also charge a fee, which we set out in writing and agree with you before you proceed.

Take a £50,000 unsecured ask from a Fratton fit-out firm with two years of accounts. What it pays is decided by the accounts, the statements and any adverse history, and a minor default more than 24 months old does not rule out every lender.

Every case gets a named case handler and one application pack, and where no lender's published criteria are met we say so on the first call rather than after a wasted fortnight.

What we see from Portsmouth businesses

Portsmouth International Port reported on 29 January 2026 that it contributes £400m to the national economy and £195m locally, supports 5,200 jobs, moved 2.9 million tonnes of goods worth £7.5 billion, carried 7.2 million ferry passengers and over 131,000 cruise passengers, and will pay £10.8m into the city council's budget this year. Add the naval base and the businesses we hear from are the ones around those two: engineering subcontractors, ship chandlers, security and cleaning firms, and the hauliers running the Channel routes.

Those firms invoice large customers and wait. An invoice facility pays out most of a 45-day debtor on the day it is raised, which is the shape the invoice lenders publish criteria for when the work is there but the money is always a month behind. Because the invoice lender is weighing the customer, its criteria on trading age differ from an unsecured lender's.

Southsea is the other Portsmouth, 575 accommodation and food businesses on the ONS count, most of them card-led and summer-weighted. The city's own economic strategy, approved on 15 October 2019 and running to 2036, set the aim of making Portsmouth “Britain's premier waterfront technology and innovation city”; the funding reality for most local firms is more prosaic and we treat it that way.

A florist's shop sign hung with garlands.

What each funding type is used for in Portsmouth

Funding type	Typically used by	Sized on
Invoice finance	Dockyard and ferry-route suppliers paid on 30 to 60 day terms	The sales ledger
Asset finance	Contractors buying plant, vans or workshop machinery	The plant or vehicle
Term loan	A firm with filed accounts funding a second unit or a bigger contract	Turnover and filed accounts

Each lender publishes its own timescale, and they change. The lender assesses every case on its own numbers.

What lenders see in Portsmouth

The ONS counted 6,020 VAT or PAYE registered enterprises in Portsmouth in March 2025, up from 5,980 a year earlier, against 58,650 for Hampshire county (UK business: activity, size and location 2025, Nomis NM_142_1, read 21 September 2026). Construction is out in front at 1,290, up from 1,240; professional, scientific and technical firms number 725, accommodation and food 575, business administration and support 480 and retail 460. The South East region grew from 404,355 to 404,910 enterprises in the same twelve months, a flat picture that a lender reads as neither boom nor bust.

The British Business Bank's Nations and Regions Tracker 2025 (7 October 2025) found 44% of South East smaller businesses using external finance in 2024, down three points, and its regional factsheet recorded 14,379 SME loan and overdraft facilities approved in 2024, 57% more than in 2023, worth £1,806m; 15% of the region's SMEs expected to need finance in the next twelve months, 24 points fewer than a year before. The Bank of England's Agents wrote in September 2026 of “less appetite to lend to firms at risk of revenue erosion from AI, smaller firms, or construction and hospitality firms”, which describes a fair slice of Portsmouth, and is why a construction case is checked against the published criteria of the asset and invoice lenders on our panel as well as the unsecured ones.

Dunsbury Park, the port and the Solent Freeport

Portsmouth has two Solent Freeport tax sites on its doorstep: Dunsbury Park north of the city and the port itself. The freeport's £25m seed capital breakdown of 25 June 2026 shows £1.2m at Dunsbury Park for enabling works on units 500 to 502, expected to support around 200 jobs, and £400,000 at Portsmouth International Port for infrastructure including the customs zone. The interim programme review reported in July 2026 put investment delivered across all Solent tax sites at almost £640m in three and a half years, with £1.75bn of international trading opportunities and a further £850m of private investment in the pipeline.

For a business taking a unit on a tax site, the reliefs on capital allowances, employer National Insurance and stamp duty sit alongside the finance rather than replacing it, and a lender funding the fit-out or the first machines will want to see how the two interact. A company buying rather than renting may look at acommercial mortgage, or a bridge where the timing is tight, and a bridge that is running out of term can sometimes be refinanced with another. For property-secured lending we work with UK limited companies and LLPs only, for business and commercial purposes.

Lender criteria describe who could look at a case, not who will approve it.

Where we work around Portsmouth

Gosport, Fareham, Havant, Waterlooville and Hayling Island are handled exactly as Portsea Island is, by phone and email from Nottinghamshire, and so is the Isle of Wight across the water. We do not have local staff on the south coast and will not claim to, but a case handler who has read your accounts is the same person whether they sit in Annesley or Albert Road.

We work with UK limited companies and LLPs only, for business and commercial purposes.

The panel behind this page

We have access to a range of UK commercial finance lenders through our principal, White Rose Finance Group Limited. Some of them write invoice finance. Lenders set different criteria on trading history, seasonality and credit history, and each lender makes its own decision.

We check each lender’s published criteria first, and your case goes only to lenders whose requirements it meets. How a case is checked against criteria is set out on our how we work page.

Portsmouth business loan questions

What does a Portsmouth business need to start an enquiry?

The last set of filed accounts, three months of business bank statements and a sentence on what the money is for. From that a named case handler works out which lenders on our panel publish criteria the case meets. Nothing is submitted until you have said so.

Can a construction firm in Portsmouth get funding without a homeowning director?

Not necessarily. Each unsecured lender publishes its own view of a director who does not own a home, and on asset finance a piece of construction plant can be the security in its own right. The trading record and the last accounts do the work instead.

How long does invoice finance take to set up for a marine supplier?

Each lender publishes its own set-up time, and they change; the lender reviews the debtor list, the contracts and the terms of trade before the first advance. After that, each lender sets its own timing for paying out against a new invoice. A supplier to the dockyard or to a ferry operator with a handful of large, slow-paying customers is the typical case.

Will a bridging lender look at a Portsmouth commercial unit with an existing mortgage?

Some bridging lenders will take a second charge behind an existing mortgage, provided there is enough equity and an exit the lender can see, normally a sale or a refinance. For property-secured lending we work with UK limited companies and LLPs only, for business and commercial purposes.

Is CapExpand based in Portsmouth?

No. CapExpand Ltd has one office, at Pure Offices, Lake View Drive, Annesley, Nottinghamshire, and Portsmouth cases run by phone and email with a named case handler from the first call to drawdown.

Do you work with sole traders in Portsmouth?

No. We arrange finance for UK limited companies and LLPs only, so we cannot take a sole trader or partnership enquiry forward.

Start a Portsmouth finance enquiry

Two minutes on the form, then a call from the named case handler who will run it. Enquiring does not affect your credit score. If you apply to a lender, it runs its own credit search, which may be recorded on your file. We read your figures against what each lender publishes and put the case only to the lenders whose published criteria it meets, once you have said so.

Start the form

Other cities we cover in South East: Brighton, Milton Keynes, Oxford, Reading, Southampton.

Firms in Portsmouth that invoice other businesses on terms have their own page: invoice finance in Portsmouth.

Sources and references

Every local figure above was read from the sources below on 21 September 2026. Nomis enterprise counts are rounded to the nearest five; the ONS 2026 edition, scheduled for 24 September 2026, will replace the 2025 figures.

CapExpand Ltd (FRN 1060885) is a credit broker and an Appointed Representative of White Rose Finance Group Limited (FRN 630772), which is directly authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. We are a broker, not a lender. We work with UK limited companies and LLPs only, for business and commercial purposes. We do not provide financial advice.