News

Autumn Budget 2018

At the Autumn Budget 2018, the Chancellor announced several measures relating to the British Business Bank. Together they represent a substantial package that further underlines the expanding role of the Bank in delivering for smaller businesses across the UK.

Start Up Loans

We welcome the Government’s commitment to funding the Start Up Loans programme until 2021. This is good news for start-up businesses across the UK, and the extension of funding will enable us to work with our delivery partner network to continue to improve the successful delivery of the programme.

ENABLE Guarantees for SME Housebuilders

The Chancellor announced that the Government will make available up to £1bn of guarantee support via specialist and high street lenders to smaller housebuilders, to be deployed through a variant of the British Business Bank’s ENABLE Guarantees programme. This will allow for the continued expansion of the programme in the sector and will promote further growth in the UK housing stock. We will work closely with MHCLG and Homes England on the delivery of this initiative.

Access to Finance and EU Exit

The Government continues to actively explore options for a future relationship with the European Investment Bank Group (including the European Investment Fund), which has invested in UK small business debt and equity markets. The Chancellor announced that if no future relationship with the EIB Group is in place when the UK leaves the EU on 29 March 2019, the Government will provide the British Business Bank with the resources to enable it to make up to £200m additional investment in venture capital and growth finance in 2019/20.

Patient Capital and Defined Contribution Pension Schemes

Following our implementation of the recommendations of last year’s Patient Capital Review, the Bank will chair a feasibility study to explore options for facilitating pooled investment in patient capital by large defined contribution pension schemes. This would be another important source of capital and would bolster other efforts to make more patient capital available for innovative companies across the UK led by ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build successful, world-class businesses.

UK Network

We were pleased to see that the UK Network was referred to in the Budget text, underlining the importance of this initiative. The new UK Network is being developed by the Bank across each of the English regions and the three Devolved Administrations – Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland – to identify and help to reduce imbalances in access to finance for smaller businesses across the UK.

Intellectual Property Research

Alongside today’s Budget, the British Business Bank has published research conducted in collaboration with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) into the barriers to high growth, IP-rich firms using their intellectual property to access growth funding, and how these may be overcome.

We will be working closely with HM Treasury, BEIS and UKGI to implement the measures announced in the Autumn Budget over the months ahead.

Keith Morgan, Chief Executive

ENDS

Further information

Scott Shearer
Senior Communications Manager
0203 772 1351 / 07770 704 761
Scott.Shearer@british-business-bank.co.uk

Mary Whenman
Director, Communications
0203 905 1495 / 07799 860 980
Mary.Whenman@british-business-bank.co.uk

About the British Business Bank

The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to make finance markets for smaller businesses work more effectively, enabling those businesses to prosper, grow and build UK economic activity. Its remit is to design, deliver and efficiently manage UK-wide smaller business access to finance programmes for the UK government.

British Business Bank programmes are currently supporting more than £5.5bn of finance to over 78,000 smaller businesses (as at 30 June 2018). As well as increasing both supply and diversity of finance for UK smaller businesses through its programmes, the Bank works to raise awareness of the finance options available to smaller businesses:

• The Business Finance Guide (published in partnership with the ICAEW and a further 21 business and finance organisations) impartially sets out the range of finance options available to businesses at all stages – from start-ups to SMEs and growing mid-sized companies. Businesses can take the interactive journey at www.thebusinessfinanceguide.co.uk.

• The new British Business Bank Finance Hub provides everything high-growth businesses need to know about their finance options, featuring short films, expert guides, checklists and articles from finance providers to help make their application a success. The new site also features case studies and learnings from real businesses to guide businesses through the process of applying for growth finance.

As the holding company of the group operating under the trading name of British Business Bank, British Business Bank plc is wholly owned by HM Government and is not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The British Business Bank operates under its own brand name through a number of subsidiaries, one of which is authorised and regulated by the FCA.

British Business Bank plc and its principal operating subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. A complete legal structure chart for British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries can be found on the British Business Bank plc website.