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Recovery Loan Scheme offers over £1bn to smaller businesses

Press release 25 October 2021

  • £1.06bn offered through almost 6,200 facilities to smaller businesses across the UK
  • Over 5,100 facilities have already drawn down, providing £823m of funding

The British Business Bank announces today that the Recovery Loan Scheme has passed a significant milestone, with 76 accredited lenders having offered over £1bn to smaller UK businesses as they steer a path towards a sustainable recovery.

Of the £1.06bn of funding offered through 6,190 facilities so far, £822.8m has been drawn down through 5,137 facilities.

The Recovery Loans Scheme launched in April 2021 and is currently scheduled to run until 31 December 2021. The scheme supports borrowing of up to £10m for individual businesses and up to £30m across a group, with funds available for any legitimate business purpose, including managing cashflow, growth and investment. It is designed to appeal to businesses that can afford to take out additional finance for these purposes.

Catherine Lewis La Torre, CEO, British Business Bank, said: “Businesses up and down the country are beginning to look beyond the pandemic towards the opportunities available to them in the recovery. The British Business Bank is committed to supporting smaller businesses in accessing the finance they need to grow sustainably in the future. In meeting the £1 billion milestone, the Recovery Loan Scheme is demonstrating its impact by helping thousands of companies to fund their further development.”

Data as provided to British Business Bank by Recovery Loan Scheme delivery partners at 18 October 2021. A breakdown of data by region and sector will be provided in future releases.

Notes to editors

Recovery Loan Scheme features and eligibility criteria can be found here.

About the British Business Bank

The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to drive sustainable growth and prosperity across the UK, and to enable the transition to a net zero economy, by improving access to finance for smaller businesses. Its remit is to design, deliver and efficiently manage UK-wide smaller business access to finance programmes for the UK government.

The British Business Bank’s core programmes support over £8.5bn 1  of finance to almost 95,000 smaller businesses 2 . The British Business Bank is responsible for running the government’s Coronavirus business loan schemes and Future Fund, together responsible for delivering £80.4 bn of finance to 1.67m businesses. The schemes are now closed to new applications.

As well as increasing both supply and diversity of finance for UK smaller businesses through its programmes, the Bank works to raise awareness of the finance options available to smaller businesses. The British Business Bank Finance Hub provides independent and impartial information to businesses about their finance options, featuring short films, expert guides, checklists and articles from finance providers to help make their application a success. In light of the coronavirus pandemic and EU Exit, the Finance Hub has expanded and it now targets a wider business audience. It continues to provide information and support for scale-up, high growth and potential high growth businesses, but now provides increased content, information and products for businesses in survival and recovery mindsets. The Finance Hub has been redesigned and repositioned to reflect this, during this period of economic uncertainty.

British Business Bank plc is a public limited company registered in England and Wales, registration number 08616013, registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. It is a development bank wholly owned by HM Government. British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. They are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for the group can be found at british-business-bank.co.uk.

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