Extending Funding for Lending will help credit reach growing businesses

22nd April 2013

Commenting on the emerging proposals for the widening of the Funding for Lending Scheme to cover more types of business finance, John Longworth, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, said:   -The proposed extension of the Funding for Lending scheme shows that the Chancellor is listening hard and acting to address continued business frustration around tight credit conditions.

  "While we will have to wait for firm details of the Treasury's proposals to emerge, we welcome the Chancellor's determination to look at ways to make Funding for Lending work for UK businesses, many of whom still feel frozen out from access to finance. Much will depend on lenders' appetite for risk, but widening the types of business finance covered by the scheme can only be a positive move.   "Yet the Chancellor and the Bank of England can, and should, go further. Were they to extend the backing of the Funding for Lending scheme's billions to the embryonic Business Bank, they would energise a new and crucial player in the lending market, and help to solve the long-term structural gap in finance that continues to strangle far too many growth businesses across the UK."