Close Brothers backs final Kingsbury Park phase

Close Brothers Property Finance has provided development finance for the fourth and final phase of Mulberry Homes’ Kingsbury Park scheme in Lutterworth, Leicestershire.

The £120m gross development value project has delivered 288 homes across four phases between 2018 and 2026. It is the largest single scheme funded by Close Brothers Property Finance and the largest and longest-running development in Mulberry Homes’ 15-year history.

The latest funding takes the number of homes financed by Close Brothers for Mulberry Homes to more than 1,000. The lender and housebuilder have worked together for 12 years across 23 developments, ranging from smaller 22-unit projects to multi-phased schemes such as Kingsbury Park.

Kingsbury Park includes two-, three-, and four-bedroom homes off Coventry Road in Lutterworth. Remaining homes at the development include solar PV panels, reflecting increased buyer, lender, and planning attention on energy performance and running costs.

The funding agreement arrives at a difficult point for many regional and SME housebuilders. Demand for new homes remains structurally strong, but delivery is being shaped by higher borrowing costs, planning delays, materials inflation, labour availability, and more cautious buyer behaviour. For developers outside the largest listed housebuilders, the availability and flexibility of development finance can determine whether a site moves through later phases or stalls near completion.

Longer project durations also alter the risk profile. Kingsbury Park ran from 2018 to 2026, crossing Brexit disruption, the Covid-19 pandemic, materials shortages, inflationary pressure, and a sharp shift in mortgage affordability. Holding a subcontractor base and maintaining programme momentum across that period required continuity of finance as well as construction management.

On phased residential schemes, development finance is more than a funding line against land and sales value. It influences release timings, infrastructure works, cash flow, subcontractor confidence, and the ability to absorb short-term market disruption. A lender familiar with a housebuilder’s delivery record can support decisions that are harder to make through one-off transactional funding.

The deal also sits within a wider imbalance in the UK housing market. Policy continues to depend heavily on increasing housing output, while SME housebuilders account for a much smaller share of completions than they did in previous decades. Smaller developers face disproportionate exposure to planning cost, upfront technical work, section agreements, utilities coordination, sales risk, and finance costs.

Finance providers that understand phased delivery can help reduce that bottleneck, although they are likely to remain selective. Lenders are looking for experienced management teams, proven sales history, disciplined cost control, and projects where infrastructure and planning risks are understood. The Close Brothers and Mulberry Homes relationship gives both sides a track record across multiple market cycles.

For the construction supply chain, the final Kingsbury Park phase converts financial capacity into workload. Groundworkers, bricklayers, roofers, M&E contractors, landscapers, road and drainage specialists, and materials suppliers all depend on developers being able to fund later phases and maintain confidence through the build-out period.

Kingsbury Park’s completion will not remove the structural pressures facing SME housebuilders, but it shows how long-term lender-developer alignment can support delivery through an uneven cycle. With planning reform still working through the system and affordability pressure still affecting buyers, that financial continuity remains central to regional housing output.