The Bank of England held Base Rate at 3.75% again, and if you are a developer waiting for that to filter through to cheaper bridging or development finance, I need to save you some time. It will not. Not directly, anyway. The Monetary Policy Committee voted 7 to 2 to hold at its June meeting, with two members actually wanting to push rates up to 4%. That is not a committee getting ready to cut. That is a committee getting more nervous, not less.
For anyone running a development or bridging deal right now, the number that matters is not Base Rate. It is the swap curve. And the swap curve has been moving for weeks, mostly before this decision, not because of it.
Why the base rate is the wrong number to watch
Bridging and development lenders do not fund themselves off Base Rate. They fund off swaps and their own cost of money, and they price fixed products against where those swaps sit today and where the market expects them to sit in twelve months. That is why fixed rate development products and bridging pricing move ahead of an MPC announcement, not after it. By the time the Bank says anything on 30 July, the lenders who fund fixed products will already have repriced around whatever the swap curve has done in the weeks before.
That curve has had a rough few months. The Middle East conflict pushed volatility into energy, inflation linked and interest rate markets together, and the UK OIS curve oscillated in a range well above where it sat before the conflict. A peace deal has since pulled the curve back toward the lower end of that range, but it still slopes upward by around 30 basis points into the end of 2026. In plain English: markets are not pricing cuts. They are pricing a small chance that rates edge higher before this is over, and lenders who fund fixed products are pricing that same caution into their offers.
That is the story behind the numbers you are actually seeing on term sheets.
What bridging and development pricing looks like right now
For a mainstream bridging case, decent asset, sensible exit, borrower who has done this before, pricing is sitting between 0.65% and 0.95% per month. That range has held fairly steady through this year's hikes and holds, because bridging was never priced off Base Rate to begin with. It is priced off risk, speed, and the lender's own cost of funds, and none of those things move much on an MPC day.
Development senior debt for experienced developers is running 6.5% to 9.5% per annum. Again, that spread has far more to do with build risk, sales risk and gearing on a scheme than it does with where Base Rate sits this month. A well specified scheme with a strong developer track record and a sensible day one loan to value will sit at the tighter end of that range regardless of what the MPC does. A first time developer on a stretched site with an ambitious GDV will sit at the wider end, and no amount of Base Rate cuts will move that on its own.
The real story: stretched senior is back
The more interesting development among lenders is not pricing, it is product. Challenger banks have started reintroducing stretched senior facilities, higher day one gearing than a standard senior loan, without needing a separate mezzanine piece stacked on top. That matters for smaller developers because it means less blended cost and less complexity in the capital structure for schemes that would previously have needed two lenders to get to the same loan to cost.
This has reappeared now because lenders with fixed funding lines locked in ahead of the volatility this year can offer sharper terms than lenders still exposed to a moving swap curve. It is a direct product of the gap between what Base Rate is doing and what swaps have been doing. Smaller developers who assume all lenders are pricing the same thing off the same number are missing where the real competition in the market currently sits.
What to lock now, and what to leave
If you have a scheme ready to go and a fixed rate offer on the table that reflects where swaps have settled since the ceasefire pulled the curve down, take it. Waiting for 30 July on the theory that a hold will bring pricing down further misunderstands how this works. The economists polled by Reuters mostly expect a hold, but nearly 40% expect at least one more hike this year and only a handful expect a cut. That is not a market about to hand you cheaper fixed pricing. If anything, a hawkish vote split on 30 July, similar to June's 7 to 2, could push swaps up rather than down, and fixed development products would follow that move within days.
Where it makes sense to wait is on variable priced facilities where you are not tied into a fixed term, and on deals still in the planning or acquisition stage where you have genuine flexibility on timing. If your scheme is not ready to draw for another two or three months, there is no cost to seeing how the 30 July minutes and the accompanying Monetary Policy Report land before you commit to a fixed structure. That meeting comes with a full set of Bank projections and a press conference, and those tend to move markets more than a standard hold does. It is worth having your numbers ready either way, because whichever way it breaks, the lenders offering fixed products will have already repriced by the time the headlines catch up.
The practical takeaway for anyone running the numbers on a scheme this summer: stop waiting on Base Rate to tell you anything about your bridging or development pricing. Watch the swap curve, get your facility structured against where funding costs sit today, and do not assume a hold means standing still is free.