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Our 2026 Impact Report sets out the impact of the British Business Bank’s activity on smaller businesses across the UK’s Nations and regions.
Our Impact in 2025/26
Inputs
We deployed £1.3bn
of public funding into smaller businesses
Boosted with an additional £4.3bn
of private sector capital
Alongside £3.7bn
of lending guaranteed
Outputs
30,000
newly funded smaller businesses, and follow on funding provided to another 8,000
87%
of businesses newly supported were outside London
16%
Supporting deals which accounted for 16% of smaller business equity investmentRead footnote text 1
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1
Based on a 2023-2025 average. For more details on the methodology, data sources and coverage of this analysis, please see British Business Bank (2026) Small Business Equity Tracker.
39%
of our Start Up Loans went to female founders
21%
of our Start Up Loans went to founders from Black, Asian or other Ethnic Minority backgrounds
Outcomes
340,000
existing jobs supported
3.9%
Our five-year combined commercial and development adjusted rate of return
7.6%
Our combined commercial and development adjusted rate of return for the year ended 2025/26
Long-term impacts
Creation of 39,000
additional jobs
£19.7bn
of additional business turnover
£8.8bn
Equivalent to an extra £8.8bn of Gross Value Added (GVA)
The Bank has continued to deliver impact across the UK
In 2025/26 the Bank helped around £9.4bn of finance to reach smaller businesses in the UK.
Around £1.3bn of this was deployment of our public funding and this was accompanied by £3.7bn of lending guaranteed and £4.3bn of leveraged private sector capitalRead footnote text 2 . Attracting such a large pool of private capital is vital as this allows us to reach a greater number of UK businesses and to ensure they receive the right level of funding.
The £9.4bn total flow of finance benefited around 38,000 UK businesses. This group includes just over 8,000 businesses who were first funded by the Bank before 2025/26 and have secured further funding in the year. The remaining 30,000 were newly supported in 2025/26. With the UK business population currently estimated at around 5.7m, this means around one in every 150 UK businesses received a flow of finance supported by the Bank in 2025/26. If we exclude the approximately 2.3m businesses that are likely to be permanent non-borrowers (businesses with no apparent appetite for finance) then around 1 in every 90 of the remaining 3.4m businesses were supported by the BankRead footnote text 3 . We are even more active in certain markets such as smaller business equity funding where the Bank supported deals worth 16% of investment between 2023 and 2025.
These flows of finance supported by the Bank can have a transformative impact on the businesses receiving them, enabling investment, funding recruitment and unlocking a whole range of other activities that can stimulate growth.
The additional impact we expect from the 30,000 businesses newly supported by the Bank in the 2025/26 financial year is the focus of this year’s report.
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2
These figures exclude ENABLE Build and direct and structured funding solutions under the Investment Programme. For more details on the coverage of this analysis, please see the methodology section
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3
Business population estimates 2025 - GOV.UK. Adjustment for permanent non-borrowers uses data from the Ipsos SME Finance Monitor SME Finance Monitor
The Growth Guarantee Scheme backed loan gave us the ability to scale quickly and invest in innovation. It’s helped us move from reactive growth to strategic expansion, positioning us for deeper penetration into US and EU markets. - Adam Gilmore Managing Director, Velocity Pro Gear
2.1x
Our GVA impact this year is more than double the annual average from our first ten years
Geographical distribution of businesses newly supported by the Bank in 2025/26
Note: Excludes businesses for which location information is unavailable. Bars are ordered by the percentage point difference between businesses supported and the total business population.
This cohort of businesses is spread across the UK with 87% based outside of London. This is a larger proportion than the 82% of the UK business population that is based outside of the capital and continues our track record of supporting growth in all parts of the UKRead footnote text 4 .
Through funding such a large and broadly spread group of businesses, the Bank is helping to unlock significant benefits for the UK economy. Over the lifetime of their finance, the businesses newly funded in 2025/26 are expected to earn around £19.7bn in additional turnover. This figure includes a range of adjustments to strip out turnover that would be expected to be earnt among the 2025/26 business cohort even without our support. Consequently the £19.7bn boost represents earnings that are additional from an economy-wide perspective.
£19.7bn of additional turnover is equivalent to around £8.8bn of gross value added (GVA). This GVA figure is the difference between the value of goods and services produced, as reflected in turnover, and the costs of the range of inputs used to produce them. GVA is important as employee compensation and business profits come from within GVA.
Again this £8.8bn figure builds in a range of adjustments to strip out GVA that would have been accrued anyway or that results from displacing existing UK economic activity. The £8.8bn of GVA impact we have unlocked this year is 2.1 times greater than our annual average impact over the Bank’s first ten years which stood at £4.3bnRead footnote text 5 .
Through helping businesses to grow their turnover and contribute more to the UK economy we are also benefitting the UK labour market. Among the 30,000 businesses newly funded this year, we estimate that around 340,000 existing jobs have been supported. Added to this, we expect 39,000 additional jobs to be created by the businesses newly backed over the lifetime of their finance.
As with the turnover and GVA impacts mentioned above, this figure includes a range of adjustments to strip out job creation that would be expected to occur among the beneficiary businesses even without our support. Consequently, the 39,000 jobs we expect to be created represent genuinely additional roles from an economy wide perspective. Furthermore, evaluation evidence suggests that many of these new roles are likely to be high quality, high productivity opportunities paying salaries in the upper end of the wage distributionRead footnote text 6 .
When we look at how these economic impacts are spread across the UK, we can see just how much value the Bank’s activities unlock in each Nation and region. For example, the boost to GVA expected from the 2025/26 cohort is more than £100m in each and every UK Nation and region.
More than
£100m
boost to GVA expected in every UK Nation and region
Estimated impacts by Nation and region, 2025/26
Source: British Business Bank estimates
| UK Nation or region | Businesses newly supported | Additional turnover (£million) | Additional GVA (£ million) | Jobs supported | Jobs created |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| East Midlands | 2,100 | 800 | 300 | 23,700 | 1,500 |
| East of England | 2,600 | 2,000 | 900 | 30,300 | 3,500 |
| London | 4,000 | 7,200 | 3,500 | 43,400 | 14,900 |
| North East | 1,000 | 400 | 200 | 11,200 | 800 |
| North West | 3,500 | 1,600 | 700 | 40,900 | 3,100 |
| Northern Ireland | 600 | 300 | 100 | 5,600 | 1,000 |
| Scotland | 1,500 | 800 | 300 | 15,500 | 1,900 |
| South East | 4,500 | 2,400 | 1,000 | 51,700 | 4,500 |
| South West | 2,800 | 1,300 | 500 | 31,000 | 2,900 |
| Wales | 1,400 | 600 | 300 | 17,200 | 1,300 |
| West Midlands | 2,900 | 1,000 | 400 | 34,600 | 1,800 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 2,700 | 1,200 | 500 | 32,500 | 2,100 |
Note: Nations and regions impact estimates are derived from UK wide impact estimates. The apportionment is based on programme level data on business location. Turnover, GVA and job creation impacts are over the lifetime of the finance.
The Bank will continue to catalyse finance markets to drive economic impact
2025/26 was another strong year of economic impact driven by the Bank’s activities.
Our catalytic approach to enhancing finance markets is evident in the £4.3bn of private capital that was invested alongside our own funds. Drawing in private capital to support UK businesses will continue to be an important feature of what we do and in April this year we took this further than ever before.
The £200m first close of the British Growth Partnership Fund I was the first time that the Bank has raised external capital from multiple investors with commitments from three large UK Defined Contribution pension schemes and Master Trusts, two of which had not invested in UK venture capital previously. In addition to directly bringing new investors into the UK venture asset class, the Bank is also providing direct sight of our investments into venture and venture growth capital funds that remain open for investment, through our Venture Link portal. This will give support to all institutional investors who are navigating these opportunities.
Recent months have also seen exciting developments on the Banking side of our business where we have a similarly catalytic impact. A key example is the Bank’s ENABLE Guarantee transaction with Allica Bank. This transaction of up to £350m is the first ever ENABLE Guarantee transaction with a bank to include a junior investor within the structure, significantly strengthening the programme’s proposition and opening a new channel for private sector investment into UK specialist and challenger banks.
All of this market expanding and shaping activity is underpinned by the Bank’s Fiveyear Strategic Plan. This plan sets out a clear mission for us to drive economic growth by helping smaller businesses get the finance they need to start, scale and stay in the UK. Through catalysing more capital, taking more risk and unlocking potential across the country, the Bank is ideally placed to deliver even more impact in the coming years.