More than 1.23 million businesses have secured almost £53 billion of credit through the government’s emergency Covid-19 lending schemes.
Figures from the Treasury show that under the bounce back loan scheme alone £35.5 billion was approved across 1.17 million facilities for small companies. A further £13.7 billion has been provided to 60,409 businesses through the coronavirus business interruption scheme (Cbils), which is aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises. In a version of this scheme for large companies, £3.5 billion was lent to 516 firms.
All three schemes involve taxpayer guarantees to give banks confidence to support companies hit by the economic fallout of the pandemic.
The unprecedented scale of the intervention has prompted concern about the impact of large debts on the longer-term viability of
