Female-founded businesses in London have borrowed £100m through the British Business Bank’s Start Up Loans programme, the bank has confirmed, with 10,853 loans delivered to approximately 10,000 businesses across the capital.
The figure covers the life of the programme, which lends to people who cannot raise start-up finance from a high street bank. It has been published alongside a change to the rules that matters more to most readers than the milestone itself: the scheme has expanded access so that businesses trading for up to five years can now apply, rather than only founders at or before launch.
Hackney and Lewisham lead the capital
Hackney South and Shoreditch is the single largest recipient constituency, with £2.86m of lending to female founders. Lewisham East follows on £2.05m, then Lewisham North on £2.03m, Tottenham on £2.02m and Chelsea and Fulham on £2.00m.
The spread is wider than those headline five suggest. Female business owners in north London took £57.5m across 6,213 loans, while south London accounted for £43m across 4,640 loans, and 58 of London’s 75 parliamentary constituencies have each drawn £1m or more. Across 10,853 loans, the average advance works out at a little over £9,000.
Adjusting for population changes the running order only slightly. On loans per 100,000 residents, Hackney South and Shoreditch again leads on 266, followed by Lewisham North on 229, Lewisham East on 224, Hackney North and Stoke Newington on 220 and Tottenham on 207. Four of the five densest borrowing areas sit in inner east and south-east London rather than the wealthier west, which is where the programme is designed to be used: it exists for founders without collateral, a trading record or a banking relationship to lean on.
Delivery runs through partner organisations, including Virgin StartUp, which has passed its own £100m Start Up Loans milestone.
Who the money reached
Forty-eight per cent of Start Up Loans to London female founders went to entrepreneurs from ethnic minority groups. Among recipients aged 18 to 24, 24 per cent were classed as not in employment, education or training before they started their business.
That second number is the one worth pausing on for anyone recruiting in the capital. A quarter of the youngest borrowers in this cohort were outside the labour market entirely before the loan, and are now running businesses that in turn hire, contract and buy from other firms.
What a £9,000 loan actually buys
Iuliia Carey used a Start Up Loan to found TAGALONG Baby, a London-based premium baby and toddler carrier brand. She trained as an interior designer and built a business in the beauty industry before becoming a mother in 2022.
The loan paid for her first production batch, and for independent testing through an accredited laboratory so the carriers would meet recognised European and American safety standards. It also covered compliance costs including technical documentation, safety instructions, labels and regulatory requirements, plus design protection, branding, packaging and launch preparation.
That list is a useful corrective to the idea that early-stage funding goes on growth. For a physical product sold to consumers, a large share of the first cheque goes on the paperwork and testing that make the product legal to sell at all.
“The Start Up Loan didn’t just help fund a new product. It helped turn an idea into a trusted brand built on safety, quality and thoughtful design,” Carey said.
“Becoming a mum in 2022 completely changed my perspective on life. Like many parents, my priorities shifted overnight, and I experienced first-hand both the joys and the challenges of everyday parenting.
“As I started using baby carriers, I realised that although there are many great products available, I couldn’t find one that truly combined comfort, practicality, safety and timeless style. I didn’t set out to create just another baby carrier. I set out to solve the problems I experienced as a mother.”
Yandis Ying, founder of Dot Dot Tea, said the programme “gave us the confidence and early funding to build Dot Dot Bubble Tea into the UK’s first dedicated bubble tea brewery. Today, we’re stocked by retailers including Harrods, Selfridges, Costco, Planet Organic, Virgin Atlantic and the University of Cambridge.”
She added: “Access to finance at the right stage can make a transformational difference for ambitious founders, particularly female entrepreneurs.”
Louise McCoy, managing director, Start Up Loans products at the British Business Bank, said: “It’s incredible to reach this £100m lending milestone for delivering Start Up Loans to London’s female business leaders. Entrepreneurial activity is bubbling away in every area and every community across London, and business owners like Iuliia brilliantly demonstrate the drive and determination of enterprising female Londoners to establish innovative and successful businesses.
“However, we’re determined to provide even more support to London based entrepreneurs than ever before. Therefore, we’ve expanded access to Start Up Loans, so now businesses that have been trading for up to five years can apply, opening the opportunity for thousands more female-led businesses in London to start and grow with support from Start Up Loans.”
For owners already trading, that reopens a door most assumed had closed. Applicants can borrow between £500 and £25,000 at a fixed 7.5 per cent over one to five years, on an unsecured personal loan basis, with business partners able to apply individually up to £100,000 for a single business.
The wider context is that these sums remain small against the gap they are meant to address. MPs on the Women and Equalities Committee reported in October 2025 that only 20 per cent of UK businesses are female-led, that female-led businesses receive loans 68 per cent smaller than male-led ones, and that women launch with 53 per cent less capital than their male peers. Separate efforts have targeted the equity end of the same problem, including the £250m assembled by the Invest in Women Taskforce.
Start Up Loans is not the instrument that closes that gap, and the bank has not claimed it is. It is the instrument that gets a first production run funded and a product tested. The British Business Bank has said it intends to issue 85,000 start up loans over five years as part of its wider strategy, so the constituency-level numbers now published are a baseline rather than a ceiling.
