The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has announced an expansion of the British Business Bank’s (BBB) Growth Guarantee Scheme (GGS). This provides a 70% government guarantee on commercial loans to SMEs of up to £2 million, cutting credit risk.
The changes will enable the scheme to scale up with an additional £2 billion of Small to Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) lending per year by 2028/29. This will bring the total lending supported through the scheme to £3.35 billion per year, more than double the current £1.35 billion.
It will also increase the maximum term length of a loan from six to 10 years for loans of up to £1.1 million and increase the maximum size of businesses eligible for a loan under the scheme from £45 million in annual turnover to £54 million.
The British Business Bank estimates these changes will support an additional 12,000 businesses per year by 2028/29, a 150% increase on the 8,000 currently being supported, bringing the total to 20,000. Since its launch in 2022, the scheme has delivered over £3.7 billion of financing to UK SMEs, with £2.5 billion of this reaching businesses outside of London and the Southeast.
It is claimed that every £1 spent on the scheme is estimated to support around £10 of lending by banks.
The Chancellor, John Healey, has given a number of speeches explaining how he intends to boost growth, reduce red tape and maintain fiscal responsibility.
The latest Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal a depressing landscape for UK companies. Foreign acquisitions of UK companies soared in value to £25.4 billion, up £9.7 billion from Q1 2026 and £15.7 billion higher than Q2 2025, highlighting how cheap UK company valuations are compared to foreign markets.
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