Over 70,000 East Midlands businesses have benefited from over £2.7bn of funding under two biggest Coronavirus loan schemes, reveal new figures from British Business Bank

Added by Love Business East Midlands | 14 August 2020

UPDATED: 14 August 2020

New data published today shows that businesses across the East Midlands have received a total of over £2.7bn in funding under the government’s two largest Covid-19 loan schemes, the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme and the Bounce Back Loan Scheme. These provide financial support to businesses across the UK that are losing revenue, and seeing their cashflow disrupted, as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak:
• over 67,000 loans worth almost £2bn have been offered across the East Midlands under the Bounce Bank Loan Scheme, which provides a six-year term loan from £2,000 up to 25% of a business’ turnover, with a limit of £50,000.
• over 3,300 loans worth almost £780m have been offered across the East Midlands under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, which provides Business loans, overdrafts, invoice finance & asset finance of up to £5m to businesses with a turnover less than £45m.
Total funding provided to East Midlands businesses represents 7% of the national total, in line with the relative size of the East Midlands’s business population (6%).

Keith Morgan, Chief Executive Officer of the British Business Bank, said: “A key objective for the British Business Bank is to identify and help reduce regional imbalances in access to finance for smaller businesses across the UK. It is welcome to see in the data that these schemes are helping businesses in the East Midlands to access the finance they need to survive and stabilise, putting them in a better position to grow as we move into recovery.”
Businesses across the country, from a wide range of sectors, have benefited from the schemes. Those featuring on the British Business Bank website include a Cambridgeshire-based cooking technology manufacturer, a Gateshead-based health solutions company and a Cornish removals company. Others include a Llandudno-based hotel, a Worksop-based plastering company and a County Down-based distributor of table sauces to food premises.

Case study: Leamick Building Systems, Worksop

Without the support of the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), Worksop-based plastering company Leamick Building Systems may not have had enough working capital to see it through this challenging period. Housebuilding firms, who are the company's main customers, stopped building new homes and started putting significant numbers of their employees on furlough. Shutting down their construction sites has meant that some of the company's income came to a sudden and unexpected halt. The company received the funds from their CBILS loan from NatWest 12 days after they applied.

Michael Maguire, Director of Leamick Building Systems, said: "Getting the loan has given me peace of mind that the business has the liquidity it needs to operate until we get back to something like normal levels of trade. That should happen now construction sites have reopened again. Without it, we potentially might not have had enough working capital to survive that difficult period."