Budget 2020: British Business Bank Response

Keith Morgan, Chief Executive, British Business Bank, said: “At Budget 2020, the Chancellor has announced new measures relating to the British Business Bank. Together they represent a significant package of funding that further underlines the critical role of the Bank in making finance markets work better for smaller businesses across the UK, allowing them to prosper and grow. The announcements include:

Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme

The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, delivered via the British Business Bank to support the continued provision of finance to UK businesses during the Covid-19 outbreak, will temporarily replace the Bank’s well-established Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) scheme with an additional £1bn being made available on top of existing support offered through the programme. It will operate in a similar way to EFG but on more attractive terms for both businesses and lenders. We will be working closely with our current EFG delivery partners and government to implement the package of enhancements, so that the new scheme is available in the coming weeks.

Start Up Loans

We welcome the Government’s extension of funding for the Start Up Loans programme until March 2022, ahead of plans to expand the programme being set out at the upcoming Spending Review this year. This is good news for start-up businesses across the country. The extension of funding will enable the programme to provide up to 10,000 more loans to new and early stage businesses, working with our delivery partner network across the whole of the UK.

Financing High-Growth Firms

The UK is creating more start-ups and attracting more venture capital funding than any other European country. We are therefore pleased that the Chancellor has provided the British Business Bank with a further £400m to back businesses that are scaling-up. This demonstrates the Government’s commitment to ensuring that innovative firms can access the finance they need to grow.

Health and Life Sciences

Within this allocation, the Budget has provided the British Business Bank with £200m of funding specifically to make equity investments in health and life sciences. We expect this to attract a further £400m of private investment, enabling us to deliver the £600m investment programme announced by the Prime Minister in October 2019. We are committed to launching this programme within a year. It will support the large-scale venture growth funds our country needs to further build our successful life sciences industry, so that the UK can continue to be a world-leader in health and life sciences innovation.

Innovative high-growth firms

The remaining £200m has been provided to enable the UK’s high growth businesses to take full advantage of new opportunities now that the UK has left the EU. This is a continuation of the additional support provided in April 2019, and will be deployed through our venture capital and growth finance funding partners during 2020/21 to ensure that innovative British firms can access more of the finance they need to grow.

As always, we will be working closely with HM Treasury, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and UKGI to implement the measures announced in the Budget over the months ahead.”