Autumn Statement 2014 – further funding for flagship British Business Bank programmes

Today’s Autumn Statement announced further funding for two of the British Business Bank’s flagship programmes.

New funding for the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) scheme will enable British Business Bank and its partners to guarantee up to £500m of new lending to smaller businesses in 2015-16, while the highly successful Enterprise Capital Funds (ECFs) programme is being expanded and extended with £400m over three years.

The ECFs programme is our flagship venture capital programme, designed to address a gap in smaller businesses’ ability to access early stage growth finance. ECFs have already made investments in over 200 smaller UK businesses.

The Enterprise Finance Guarantee, which underwrites a proportion of the risk associated with new small business lending by banks, facilitated £330m of lending in the year to end June 2014, benefiting over 3,000 smaller businesses.

You can read more about the Autumn Statement, and download the full document, at https://www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/autumn-statement-2014