| Practice area: | Entrepreneurship & SMEs | Finance | Public Policy |
|---|---|
| Client: | British Business Bank |
| Published: | 12 May, 2025 |
| Keywords: | impact assessment SMEs finance growth impact evaluation |
In response to the enormous challenge faced by businesses as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government rapidly deployed around £80 billion of finance to businesses through three loan guarantee schemes (BBLS, CBILS and CLBILS). In 2021 London Economics were commissioned to lead a large interdisciplinary team conducting a mutli-year evaluation of the schemes. The key findings of the third evaluation report, published on May 9th 2025, were that:
- The schemes brought benefits of between £27 billion and £77 billion to the economy, with an overall benefit to cost ratio of 1.24 to 3.78.
- The schemes prevented the closure of approximately 100,000 businesses and the loss of approximately 600,000 jobs.
- Turnover of participating businesses was approximately 7% higher than it would have been in the absence of the schemes
This evaluation report is another in a series of reports prepared by London Economics for the British Business Bank over the last few years. Others include the evaluation of the Recovery Loan Scheme, which was recently extended (rebranded as the Growth Guarantee Scheme) providing an additional £500m of additional lending capacity for small businesses. A link to the press release from the British Business Bank can be found here and the full evaluation report is available here.