More people misread the Growth Guarantee Scheme than any other government finance programme in the UK, and the name is doing most of the damage. The guarantee is real, but it is not yours. The government promises an accredited lender 70% of whatever is still outstanding after that lender has finished its normal recovery process against you. You stay liable for 100% of the debt, for the whole term, and any personal guarantee you sign on top of it remains enforceable.
What the scheme changes is whether a lender says yes to a business it would otherwise turn down. It does not set your interest rate, it does not cap your fees, and it does not oblige anyone to lend to you. The British Business Bank is unusually blunt about the last point: if a lender can offer a commercial loan on better terms, it will do so. That single sentence tells you more about when to ask for a scheme facility than any amount of marketing around it.
One warning before the detail. The Chancellor announced changes to the scheme on 12 July 2026 (a higher turnover ceiling and longer terms), and those changes are not in force yet. We have kept the announced rules separate from the live ones throughout this page, because applying on the strength of a press release is how a plan comes apart at credit approval. Every figure below carries the date we read it and the source we read it from.
Growth Guarantee Scheme at a Glance
Read the right-hand column before anything else. It separates the rules an accredited lender will apply to your application today from the changes the government has announced but not yet delivered.
| Feature | In force today | Announced but not yet in force |
|---|---|---|
| Government guarantee | 70% of the balance still outstanding after the lender’s recovery process, paid to the lender | No change announced |
| Your liability | 100%, throughout | No change announced |
| Turnover ceiling | £45m, measured across the whole group | Rising to £54m |
| Maximum facility | £2m per business group; £1m in scope of the Northern Ireland Protocol, less again in agriculture and fisheries | No change announced |
| Minimum facility | £25,001 for term loans and overdrafts; £1,000 for asset finance, invoice finance and asset-based lending | No change announced |
| Finance available | Term loans, overdrafts, asset finance, invoice finance and asset-based lending. No single lender offers all five | No change announced |
| Maximum term | Three months to six years for term loans and asset finance; three months to three years for overdrafts, invoice finance and asset-based lending | Up to ten years for term loans and asset finance |
| Interest and fees | Set by the lender on commercial terms. The scheme sets no rate and caps no fee | No change announced |
| Personal guarantees | Taken at the lender’s discretion under its normal practice. Your main home cannot be taken as security within the scheme | No change announced |
| How you apply | Directly to an accredited lender. There is no application route through the British Business Bank | No change announced |
| Scheme end date | 31 March 2030 | An extra £6.5bn of lending capacity over four years |
| We read every line in the left-hand column off the British Business Bank’s scheme and subsidies pages on 20 August 2026. The right-hand column is the Chancellor’s announcement of 12 July 2026, which the British Business Bank says accredited lenders are still working to implement. | ||
July 2026 GGS Changes: What Is Changing?
Three things were announced on 12 July 2026: a turnover ceiling of £54m instead of £45m, terms of up to ten years on term loans and asset finance instead of six, and a further £6.5bn of lending capacity over four years, which the British Business Bank expects to reach around 33,000 businesses. None of it is live. The Bank’s own wording is that it is working with accredited lenders to operationalise the enhancements, and that the scheme remains fully operational under the existing terms in the meantime.
That distinction is the whole of the practical advice here. An announcement is government policy; a lender’s credit policy is a separate document that has to be rewritten, approved and rolled out to the people who make decisions. If your business sits between £45m and £54m of turnover, or if a ten-year term is the reason the numbers work at all, you need to ask the lender directly whether it has adopted the new limits, and if the answer is not yet, ask when.
Current GGS Rules
Everything an accredited lender will apply to an application made today is in the middle column of the table above: turnover up to £45m across the group, facilities up to £2m, terms of up to six years on term loans and asset finance, and a 70% guarantee to the lender against your unchanged liability for the full amount. Those are the numbers to plan around until a lender tells you otherwise in writing.
£54m Turnover Eligibility
The headline change helps fewer businesses than it sounds like it does. We counted the British Business Bank’s own lending record to 31 March 2026 and found 252 facilities written to businesses turning over between £25m and £45m: 1.2% of everything the scheme has done, and 4.0% of the money. Move the ceiling to £54m and you extend the scheme to a band above that, which on any reading of the pattern will be smaller again.
Where the scheme actually lives is a long way below the ceiling. Businesses turning over under £5m hold 86.1% of all facilities, and the single busiest band is £1m to £5m, at 32.0%. So the £54m announcement is worth having if you are one of the few hundred businesses it reaches, and worth ignoring entirely if you are one of the eighteen thousand who were never near the old limit. It changes nothing about how your application will be assessed.
Longer Loan and Asset Finance Terms
The move from six years to ten is the change with real money in it, and it is the one worth chasing. On a £500,000 term loan, stretching the repayment from six years to ten cuts the monthly cost by roughly a third, which is often the difference between a facility your cash flow can carry and one it cannot. It also raises the total interest you pay, because you are borrowing the money for four more years: a longer term is a cash-flow fix, not a cheaper loan.
The extension applies to term loans and asset finance only. Overdrafts, invoice finance and asset-based lending stay at three years under the announcement as it stands.
When Will the New Rules Be Available?
The British Business Bank has not published a date. Its statement says the extra capacity will be made available “over the coming weeks”, which was the wording on 12 July and was still the wording when we checked on 20 August 2026. Implementation is per lender rather than scheme-wide, so the sensible expectation is that some accredited lenders will offer the new limits before others do, and that the large banks and the specialist asset finance houses will not move in step.
Ask the question in plain terms when you first speak to a lender: has your credit policy been updated for the July 2026 changes, and can I have a ten-year term today? A lender that says yes has done the work. A lender that says it is coming has told you to plan on the current rules, which is a useful answer in itself.
What Is the Growth Guarantee Scheme?
The Growth Guarantee Scheme is a government guarantee laid over ordinary commercial lending. It succeeded the Recovery Loan Scheme on 1 July 2024, the 2025 Spending Review extended it to 31 March 2030, and the British Business Bank administers it on behalf of the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. You never deal with the British Business Bank yourself. You deal with one of the accredited lenders, who lends its own money, runs its own credit checks, and holds the guarantee.
How the 70% Government Guarantee Works
The guarantee covers 70% of the balance still outstanding after the lender has completed its normal recovery process, and it pays the lender. Three consequences follow, and all three matter to you. The lender still underwrites the loan properly, because it carries 30% of any loss and has paid the government a fee for cover on the rest. Your obligations are not reduced by the guarantee existing. And there is no point in the process at which you contact anyone about the guarantee: it is an arrangement between the lender and the government that you are not party to.
It does get used. By 31 March 2026 lenders had settled 1,196 claims worth £71.34m, which is 2.0% of everything the scheme has lent. That figure is a reasonable check on the idea that the guarantee is a formality. It is not. It is simply a protection that points the other way.
Why Your Business Still Owes 100%
If the business cannot repay, nothing is written off.
The lender pursues you for the full balance, recovers what it can from you and from any security it holds, and only then claims 70% of the shortfall from the government. You gain nothing from that claim, and a personal guarantee you signed remains enforceable against you afterwards.
We quote the British Business Bank’s own sentence rather than paraphrasing it, because the paraphrases are where the meaning slips: the borrower always remains 100% liable for the debt. Anyone who describes a scheme facility as government-underwritten borrowing, or who suggests you would only be chased for 30%, has either misunderstood it or is relying on you not checking.
Who Is Eligible for the Growth Guarantee Scheme?
Scheme eligibility is broad and it is only the first of two tests. Meeting every rule below qualifies your application to be considered under the scheme; it does not qualify you for a loan. The second test is the lender’s own credit policy, which is stricter, unpublished, and different at every lender on the list.
Turnover and UK Trading Requirements
Your group turnover must be no more than £45m. Group is the operative word: if you are part of a wider group, the test applies across the whole of it rather than to the company that is borrowing, which catches out businesses that sit inside a larger structure. You must also be carrying out trading activity in the UK and, for most businesses, generating more than half your income from trading. Charities and further education colleges are exempt from that income test for facilities offered after 9 March 2023.
Viability and Affordability
Two separate hurdles hide inside this one heading. The lender must consider that you have a viable business proposition, and you must not be a business in difficulty, which includes not being in relevant insolvency proceedings. Beyond that, the scheme requires that you can afford to take on the debt: the facility can be used for any legitimate business purpose, including managing cash flow, but not as a way of absorbing borrowing the business cannot service.
In practice this is where most declines happen, and it is assessed by the lender rather than by the scheme. Your filed accounts, your management figures, your bank statements and your credit file all carry the same weight they would on an unguaranteed application.
Can Start-ups or Newer Businesses Apply?
Yes, and more of them do than most people expect. The scheme sets no minimum trading period at all, and the lending record shows that is not a technicality: of the 21,194 facilities written to 31 March 2026, 1,355 went to businesses less than a year old and another 4,527 to businesses of one to four years. Together that is 27.8% of all scheme facilities and £990m of the money. More than a quarter of this scheme has gone to businesses under five years old.
The catch sits at the lender, not the scheme. Accredited lenders set their own minimum trading history, and a bank asking for two or three years of filed accounts is applying its own policy rather than a scheme rule. So a young business can be fully eligible under the scheme and still be declined by the first lender it approaches for a reason that has nothing to do with the scheme at all. If you are in your first year, the specialist lenders and the community development finance institutions are usually the more realistic starting point, and our guide to start-up business loans covers the alternatives.
If you need £25,000 or less and you are within five years of starting, look at Start Up Loans first. It is a different government programme with a fixed rate and no lender underwriting in the commercial sense, and for small amounts it is usually simpler and cheaper than anything under the Growth Guarantee Scheme.
Businesses That Cannot Apply
The exclusions are narrower than the eligibility rules but they are absolute. A business in difficulty cannot use the scheme, and neither can one in relevant insolvency proceedings. A group turning over more than £45m is out until the announced ceiling takes effect. A business generating less than half its income from trading is out unless it is a charity or a further education college. And a business that has already used its subsidy allowance is out, which is the exclusion people discover latest and understand least: it is covered in full further down this page.
Previous Bounce Back, CBILS and Recovery Loans
Having used an earlier scheme does not shut you out. The British Business Bank is explicit that a business which took a Bounce Back Loan, CBILS, CLBILS or a Recovery Loan Scheme facility before 30 June 2024 is not prevented from accessing the Growth Guarantee Scheme. What it can do is reduce the maximum you are eligible for, because the earlier borrowing counts against your subsidy allowance.
Which earlier facilities count is not obvious and is worth checking before you apply rather than during credit approval. Recovery Loan Scheme facilities offered from 1 August 2022 onwards count against the allowance; Recovery Loan facilities offered between 6 April 2021 and 30 June 2022 do not, even if the money was drawn later. Bounce Back Loans count only in limited cases where your lender told you the facility was provided under the EU de minimis rules. CBILS, CLBILS and Start Up Loans do not count at all.
How Much Can You Borrow Through GGS?
The scheme ceiling is £2m per business group, and almost nobody borrows it. We put the average facility written to 31 March 2026 at £172,000, and 53.8% of all facilities were £100,000 or less. Facilities between £1m and £2m account for 1.9% of the count, though, because they are large, 17.5% of the money.
That distribution is the most useful thing on this page for sizing an application. If you are asking for £80,000, you are in the busiest part of the scheme and dozens of lenders will write it. If you are asking for £1.5m, you are in a band that fewer than five hundred businesses have reached, and your realistic list of lenders is short.
Minimum and Maximum Facility Sizes
The maximum is £2m per business group for borrowers outside the scope of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Minimums vary by product, and the gap between them is wide enough to decide which product you should be asking for: £25,001 for a term loan or an overdraft, but £1,000 for asset finance, invoice finance and asset-based lending. If you need £15,000 for a van, asset finance is the route into the scheme and a term loan is not.
| Facility size | Facilities | Share of facilities | Drawn value | Share of the money |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under £10,000 | 116 | 0.5% | £0.68m | 0.0% |
| £10,000 to £25,000 | 491 | 2.3% | £9.44m | 0.3% |
| £25,001 to £50,000 | 4,781 | 22.6% | £172.89m | 4.7% |
| £50,001 to £100,000 | 6,009 | 28.4% | £443.25m | 12.2% |
| £100,001 to £250,000 | 6,427 | 30.3% | £1,028.65m | 28.2% |
| £250,001 to £500,000 | 2,097 | 9.9% | £734.51m | 20.2% |
| £500,001 to £1m | 860 | 4.1% | £615.21m | 16.9% |
| £1m to £2m | 413 | 1.9% | £638.45m | 17.5% |
| Facility counts and drawn values: British Business Bank GGS (including Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3) performance data as at 31 March 2026, published 19 May 2026. Shares are a BusinessExpert calculation and may not sum to 100% because of rounding. The 607 facilities under £25,001 are asset, invoice and asset-based lending, where the minimum is £1,000. | ||||
Northern Ireland Rules
Businesses in scope of the Northern Ireland Protocol borrow up to £1m rather than £2m, and the cap falls further in sectors where aid limits are reduced: agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture in particular. Every applicant answers a set of questions to establish whether they are in scope, so this is settled during the application rather than assumed.
The effect shows in the lending record. Northern Ireland has the lowest take-up in the UK at 18.17 facilities per 10,000 small and medium businesses, against 47.36 in the West Midlands and 46.53 in the North West. Some of that gap is the lower cap and the different subsidy rules; some of it is that fewer accredited lenders operate there. Either way, if you are borrowing in Northern Ireland, expect a shorter list of lenders and a lower ceiling than this page’s headline figures suggest.
Subsidy Limits
A guaranteed facility counts as a subsidy to your business, and there is a cap on how much subsidy you can receive over three fiscal years. Outside the Northern Ireland Protocol, that cap is £315,000 of Minimal Financial Assistance under the Subsidy Control Act. Inside the Protocol, EU de minimis rules apply instead, at £255,000 for most sectors, £42,500 for primary agricultural production and £25,500 for primary production of fishery and aquaculture products.
Here is the part that trips people up, and it is worth being precise about: the subsidy is not the loan. The value of the subsidy is the benefit of the guarantee, not the amount you borrow, so a £315,000 cap does not mean a £315,000 borrowing limit. What it does mean is that grants, earlier guaranteed loans and other public support you have taken in the current fiscal year and the two before it all eat into the same allowance, and in some cases can reduce what you can borrow to nothing. Your lender will ask you to confirm the position in writing. Work it out before that conversation rather than in it.
What Types of Finance Are Available?
The scheme supports five product types on paper. We counted what has actually been written under each of them, and in practice this is a term loan and asset finance scheme. The split is not close.
| Product | Facilities | Share of facilities | Drawn value | Average facility | Maximum term |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Term loan | 14,907 | 70.3% | £2,690.41m | £180,000 | Six years |
| Asset finance | 5,815 | 27.4% | £839.95m | £144,000 | Six years |
| Invoice finance | 453 | 2.1% | £98.22m | £217,000 | Three years |
| Revolving credit, including overdrafts | 19 | 0.1% | £14.50m | £763,000 | Three years |
| Facility counts and drawn values: British Business Bank GGS (including Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3) performance data as at 31 March 2026. Shares and averages are a BusinessExpert calculation. Averages are drawn value divided by facilities, rounded to the nearest £1,000; they describe completed lending, not a quotation or a lender limit. Maximum terms are the current scheme rules; the July 2026 announcement would raise the first two to ten years. | |||||
Term Loans
Term loans are the scheme, more or less: 14,907 facilities and 73.8% of everything lent. They run from three months to six years, start at £25,001, and are what a lender will reach for if you want money for working capital, a project or a purchase that is not a specific asset. If you are approaching a high-street bank about the scheme, this is almost certainly the product being discussed.
Asset Finance
Asset finance is the scheme’s quiet second act, at 5,815 facilities, and it is the route most people overlook. It starts at £1,000 rather than £25,001, which puts small equipment purchases inside the scheme when a term loan could not reach them, and it is dominated by specialists rather than banks. Close Brothers, Simply Asset Finance, Shire Leasing, Compass and Arkle have between them written thousands of these facilities. A separate pilot, Green GGS, is running to extend the scheme’s support for businesses investing in sustainable assets; it is a pilot rather than a general offer, so treat it as worth asking about rather than something to plan on.
Invoice Finance
Invoice finance is supported and rarely used: 453 facilities, 2.1% of the scheme. It runs for up to three years rather than six. The small number is not a warning about the product, which suits businesses with slow-paying commercial customers perfectly well: it tells you that few accredited lenders offer it under the scheme, so you will need to filter the directory rather than ring round.
Overdrafts and Other Eligible Facilities
If you have come to this page hoping for a guaranteed overdraft, the honest answer is that it is barely happening. Nineteen revolving credit facilities exist across the whole scheme (0.1% of the count), and their average size, £763,000, tells you they are large, negotiated arrangements rather than anything you can apply for as a matter of course. Asset-based lending is listed as supported but does not appear as its own line in the published data.
We rate both as available in principle and unavailable in practice unless a lender raises them with you first. If a flexible facility is what the business actually needs, a term loan under the scheme and a separate commercial overdraft will usually be the quicker route than waiting for a guaranteed overdraft that almost no lender writes.
Growth Guarantee Scheme Lenders Compared
Choosing the lender matters more than choosing the scheme, because the lender sets everything you will actually feel: the rate, the fees, whether a personal guarantee is required, how long you wait, and whether you are approved at all. The scheme sets none of it.
The table below is not a ranking. We built it from what each of the largest participating lenders has genuinely written under the scheme, which is the closest thing to an honest signal of appetite that exists: a lender that has written 6,192 facilities at an average of £80,000 wants different business from one that has written 83 at an average of just over £1m.
| Lender | Type | Total drawn | Facilities | Average facility |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HSBC UK | High-street bank | £531.39m | 1,535 | £346,000 |
| Funding Circle | Specialist lender | £496.43m | 6,192 | £80,000 |
| Close Brothers | Specialist, asset finance | £467.60m | 2,342 | £200,000 |
| Allica Bank | Challenger bank | £255.88m | 877 | £292,000 |
| Atom Bank | Challenger bank | £209.65m | 355 | £591,000 |
| Simply Asset Finance | Specialist, asset finance | £207.22m | 1,621 | £128,000 |
| Barclays | High-street bank | £179.82m | 375 | £480,000 |
| Lloyds Bank | High-street bank | £117.55m | 432 | £272,000 |
| NatWest Group | High-street bank | £113.16m | 483 | £234,000 |
| Arbuthnot Latham | Private bank | £88.68m | 83 | £1,068,000 |
| Paragon Bank | Challenger bank | £85.20m | 682 | £125,000 |
| Kingsway Finance | Specialist, asset finance | £81.03m | 607 | £133,000 |
| Shire Leasing | Specialist, asset finance | £79.38m | 908 | £87,000 |
| Haydock Finance | Specialist, asset finance | £64.11m | 192 | £334,000 |
| Santander UK | High-street bank | £31.15m | 50 | £623,000 |
| Drawn values and facility counts: British Business Bank GGS (including Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3) performance data as at 31 March 2026. Average facility is a BusinessExpert calculation: drawn value divided by facilities, rounded to the nearest £1,000. It describes lending already completed, not a quotation, a limit, or a prediction of what any lender would offer you. Lender type is our classification. Accreditation and appetite both change; we last checked the directory on 20 August 2026. | ||||
How to Check Whether a Lender Is Currently Accredited
Check the British Business Bank’s own accredited lender directory before you speak to anybody. It is the only authoritative list, it can be filtered by product and by region, and accreditations are added and removed over time: 55 lenders were listed when we checked on 20 August 2026, which is a snapshot rather than a fixed number.
Two things the directory will not tell you. Accredited for the scheme does not mean accredited for every product in it, which is why the filters exist. And accredited does not mean willing to lend to you: appetite by sector, size and trading history sits inside each lender’s credit policy and is not published anywhere. The British Business Bank also carries a fraud warning worth repeating: a scheme facility can only be offered through an accredited lender, so if an intermediary offers you one, check the lender behind it against the directory yourself.
Banks and Challenger Banks
The banks write bigger facilities and fewer of them. HSBC has lent more than anyone under the scheme, £531.39m, but across only 1,535 facilities at an average of £346,000. Barclays averages £480,000, Santander £623,000 across 50 facilities, and Arbuthnot Latham £1,068,000 across 83. We read that pattern as an appetite for established borrowers taking large amounts, usually where there is already a banking relationship in place.
The challenger banks sit between the two camps. Allica has written 877 facilities at an average of £292,000 and Paragon 682 at £125,000, which puts both within reach of a mid-sized business that a high-street bank might consider too small to bother with. Your own bank remains a sensible first call, mainly because it already holds your account data and can move faster on it, but it should not be your only call.
Specialist Business Lenders
The specialists are where the volume is. Funding Circle alone has written 6,192 facilities, nearly a third of every facility in the scheme, at an average of £80,000: smaller sums, more of them, and a decision process built for businesses that do not have a relationship manager. Close Brothers, Simply Asset Finance, Shire Leasing and Kingsway do the same job on the asset finance side.
Below them sit the community development finance institutions and regional funds: Business Enterprise Fund, Finance For Enterprise, BCRS, SWIG, Coventry and Warwickshire Reinvestment Trust and others. They write the smallest facilities on the list, frequently under £100,000, and they exist specifically to lend where the commercial market will not. If you have been declined by a bank and by one of the large platforms, they are the part of the list worth working through rather than giving up on.
Why Lender Eligibility Differs From GGS Eligibility
The scheme sets a wide outer boundary. Each lender then draws a much smaller shape inside it, and that shape is the one you are actually being measured against. Decision-making is delegated to the lender, which is required to run its standard credit and fraud checks on every applicant, and nothing in the scheme obliges it to approve a business that qualifies.
| Question | Set by the scheme | Set by the lender |
|---|---|---|
| Turnover limit | Yes, up to £45m across the group | Yes, a lender may apply a lower ceiling or a minimum of its own |
| Minimum trading history | No, the scheme sets none | Yes, entirely the lender’s policy |
| Sector appetite | Only via subsidy caps in agriculture and fisheries | Yes, and it is rarely published |
| Credit profile and affordability | Broad viability test only | Yes, standard credit and fraud checks on every applicant |
| Interest rate and fees | No | Yes, set commercially, with no scheme cap |
| Personal guarantee | Permitted, at the lender’s discretion | Yes, under its normal commercial practice |
| Security | Bars your main home from being taken as security | Yes, everything else |
| Which products are offered | Five product types are supported | Yes, no lender offers all five |
| Final decision | No | Yes, delegated to the lender in full |
| Scheme column: British Business Bank scheme rules, read 20 August 2026. Lender column: BusinessExpert assessment of what the scheme leaves to the lender’s own credit policy. Individual lender criteria are not published and we have not inferred them. | ||
Two conclusions follow, and both are worth holding on to. Qualifying under the scheme is not approval. And being declined by one accredited lender tells you what that lender’s credit policy says, not whether the scheme is open to you: a business turned down by a high-street bank for having only eighteen months of accounts may be perfectly ordinary business for a specialist lender.
Growth Guarantee Scheme Interest Rates and Fees
The scheme does not set a rate. There is no scheme APR, no rate table, and no cap on what an accredited lender may charge you. Anyone quoting a Growth Guarantee Scheme interest rate is quoting a particular lender’s price for a particular proposal.
Who Sets Your Interest Rate?
Your lender does, on its own commercial terms. The British Business Bank’s position is that interest rates and fees will vary and will depend on the specific lending proposal, and that the lender’s pricing takes into account both the benefit of the guarantee and the fee the lender pays the government for it. So the guarantee is one input into the price rather than a discount applied to it, and the lender pockets some of the benefit in exchange for carrying the risk it still holds.
Does GGS Make Borrowing Cheaper?
Not reliably, and you should not apply on that basis. The government guarantee can affect the terms a lender is prepared to offer, but it does not guarantee that a scheme-backed facility will be cheaper than an ordinary business loan. Compare both wherever both are available to you.
The British Business Bank settles the argument from the other direction: if a lender can offer a commercial loan on better terms, it will do so. We read that as the scheme’s own account of what it is for. It exists to get a facility written where the commercial answer would have been no, or would have been a smaller sum against security you do not have. That is a good reason to want one. It is a poor reason to assume it is the cheap option.
Fees to Check
Ask for the total cost of the facility in pounds, not the rate, and get these four items in writing before you sign anything:
- Arrangement or facility fee. Usually a percentage of the amount borrowed, often deducted from what lands in your account, so you may draw less than you asked for.
- Interest basis. Whether the rate is fixed or variable, and if variable, what it is linked to and how often it can move.
- Early repayment charges. These decide whether you can refinance if your position improves, and they vary widely between lenders under this scheme.
- Documentation, valuation and legal costs. Most common where security is being taken, and usually payable by you whether or not the facility completes.
Example Cost Calculation
Because the scheme sets no rate, the only honest illustration is one that shows the spread. The table below models the same £100,000 term loan over five years at four different rates, to show what the lender’s pricing decision is worth to you in cash.
| Annual interest rate | Monthly repayment | Total repaid | Total interest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7.5% | £2,003.79 | £120,228 | £20,228 |
| 9.5% | £2,100.19 | £126,011 | £26,011 |
| 11.5% | £2,199.26 | £131,956 | £31,956 |
| 13.5% | £2,300.98 | £138,059 | £38,059 |
| BusinessExpert calculation, 20 August 2026. Assumes nominal annual interest on the reducing balance, equal monthly repayments in arrears, no fees and no overpayments. Totals rounded to the nearest pound. These are illustrative rates chosen to show the spread. The Growth Guarantee Scheme does not set an interest rate and none of these figures is a scheme rate or a quotation. | |||
Six percentage points of difference costs £17,831 on a £100,000 loan over five years, before a single fee is added. That is the argument for approaching more than one accredited lender, and it is worth more than any feature of the scheme itself. To model your own amount, term and rate, use our business loan calculator: put in the rate a lender has actually quoted you rather than a rate you have seen advertised.
Personal Guarantees and Security
Three different instruments get called guarantees in this market, and confusing them is expensive. They point in different directions and protect different people.
| Instrument | Who is protected | Who is exposed | Set by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Government guarantee | The accredited lender | The government, for 70% of the shortfall after recovery | Scheme rules, fixed at 70% |
| Personal guarantee | The accredited lender | You, personally, for the amount guaranteed | The lender, at its discretion |
| Security | The accredited lender | The assets charged | The lender, except that your main home is barred by the scheme |
| British Business Bank scheme rules, read 20 August 2026. | |||
Government Guarantee vs Personal Guarantee
The government guarantee protects the lender from you. A personal guarantee protects the lender by exposing you. They share a word and nothing else, and a facility can carry both at once: on larger amounts it commonly does.
Under the scheme rules, personal guarantees are taken at the lender’s discretion in line with its normal commercial lending practice. The Minister’s wording in Parliament goes slightly further than that and is worth knowing: delivery partners are required to apply personal guarantees where they would in the course of their normal commercial lending. In other words, the scheme does not soften a lender’s usual approach to guarantees, and it was never intended to.
Can Your Home Be Used as Security?
Not as security within the scheme. Your Principal Private Residence (the home you live in) cannot be taken as security for a scheme facility, at any facility size. That is a genuine protection and it is more than ordinary commercial lending gives you.
Be clear about what it does not do, though, because this is where the reassurance is oversold. It stops the house being charged as collateral. It does not stop a lender taking a personal guarantee from you, and it does not stop that guarantee being enforced against you afterwards. For a director whose main asset is the family home, an enforced personal guarantee can still end in the same place by a longer road. Other property you own is not covered by the restriction either. If a personal guarantee is on the table, our guide to personal guarantees for business loans covers what to negotiate and what to refuse.
How Common Are Personal Guarantees?
Common enough that you should assume one until a lender tells you otherwise. In a written answer to Parliament on 21 May 2025, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Business and Trade, Gareth Thomas, stated that under the Growth Guarantee Scheme and Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3, approximately 70% of facilities have been recorded by the lender as having a personal guarantee attached.
Three caveats keep that figure useful rather than misleading. It is historical, covering facilities already written rather than what will be asked of you. It combines Growth Guarantee Scheme facilities with the older Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3, and the two are not separated in the answer. And it is an aggregate across every lender and every facility size, so it does not predict any individual outcome: a £30,000 asset finance agreement and a £1.5m term loan sit in the same 70%.
What it does do is settle a question the marketing language leaves open. “Personal guarantees may be required” reads as an exception. Seven facilities in ten is not an exception, it is the norm, and the difference between those two readings is the difference between a director who negotiated the guarantee and one who was surprised by it a week before completion. Ask at the first conversation whether a personal guarantee will be required, whether it can be capped, and what it will be capped at.
How to Apply for a GGS Facility
You apply to a lender, not to the scheme. There is no central application, no government form, and no stage at which the British Business Bank assesses you. In most cases you will not fill in anything labelled Growth Guarantee Scheme at all: you apply for a business loan or an asset finance agreement, and the lender decides whether to write it under the scheme.
Choose an Accredited Lender
Start with the directory, filtered by the product you need and the region you trade in, and shortlist three rather than one. Your existing bank is a reasonable first call because it already has your account history, but the lending record above shows how differently the banks and the specialists behave, and a shortlist that contains only your own bank is not a shortlist.
Ask each of the three the same four questions before you apply properly: do you write scheme facilities at this size, what is your minimum trading history, will a personal guarantee be required, and have you implemented the July 2026 changes. The answers will thin the list quickly, and they cost you nothing at that stage.
Documents You May Need
Requirements vary by lender and by facility size, and no lender publishes its full list. The following is what a business is commonly asked for on a scheme-backed application, and having it ready shortens the process considerably:
- Filed accounts for the last two years where they exist, and management accounts covering the period since.
- Bank statements, typically the last six to twelve months, or read directly through Open Banking.
- A statement of what the money is for and how it will be repaid: the affordability case, in your own numbers.
- Director details and identification for anti-money-laundering and fraud checks on everyone with significant control.
- A written subsidy declaration confirming the facility will not take you over your allowance, including any grants and earlier scheme borrowing in the current fiscal year and the two before it.
- Asset details, for asset finance: invoice, supplier, specification and, where relevant, valuation.
The subsidy declaration is the one that catches businesses out, because it needs information that may sit with your accountant rather than in your own records. Start gathering it early rather than at offer stage.
Credit and Affordability Checks
Lenders are required to run their standard credit and fraud checks on every applicant, and the guarantee does not soften them. Expect the business credit file to be pulled, the directors to be checked personally where a personal guarantee is in prospect, and affordability tested against your actual figures rather than your forecast.
Check your own credit file first, both business and personal, and correct anything wrong on it before you apply. A closed account still showing as open, or a default that should have dropped off, is a fixable problem beforehand and an unexplained decline afterwards.
What Happens if One Lender Declines You?
A decline is that lender’s answer, not the scheme’s. Because credit decisions are delegated in full, a business that fails one lender’s policy on trading history, sector or facility size can be entirely ordinary business for another, and the lending record shows how differently the participants behave. Funding Circle has written 6,192 facilities and Santander 50. Those are not the same appetite.
Ask the declining lender what failed. If it was the amount or the product, a different structure at the same lender may work: asset finance starts at £1,000 where a term loan starts at £25,001. If it was trading history, move to the specialists and the community lenders rather than another high-street bank. If it was affordability, no amount of shopping around will fix it, and the honest answer is that the business needs a smaller facility or a longer term rather than a different lender.
Whatever the reason, space the applications out so you are not collecting credit searches in a fortnight. Our guide to choosing a business loan is worth reading before you start the second round.
How Businesses Are Using GGS
The British Business Bank publishes the scheme’s lending record, and it is the best available answer to the question of who is really getting this money. The analysis in this section is ours, calculated from that published data.
Amount of Finance Provided
To 31 March 2026, more than 70 lenders had written 21,194 facilities worth £3.64bn, at an average of £172,000. Of that, £2.51bn (68.9%) went to businesses outside London and the South East.
We checked the repayment record as well, and it is more reassuring than the coverage of guaranteed lending usually suggests. At the same date, 77.49% of facilities were on schedule and 10.08% had been fully repaid, against 4.01% in arrears and 1.66% defaulted. Lenders had settled 1,196 claims worth £71.34m, or 2.0% of everything drawn.
Regional Distribution
London takes the largest cash total, £652.60m, which is what you would expect from the size of its business population. Measured against that population, it is close to the bottom of the table.
| Nation or region | Drawn value | Facilities | Facilities per 10,000 SMEs | Average facility |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| West Midlands | £354.11m | 2,134 | 47.36 | £166,000 |
| North West | £403.40m | 2,367 | 46.53 | £170,000 |
| Wales | £129.78m | 850 | 43.79 | £153,000 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | £306.39m | 1,754 | 42.97 | £175,000 |
| North East | £113.76m | 706 | 42.41 | £161,000 |
| East Midlands | £274.86m | 1,584 | 39.36 | £174,000 |
| East of England | £361.07m | 2,065 | 35.68 | £175,000 |
| Scotland | £193.98m | 1,264 | 34.99 | £153,000 |
| South East | £480.00m | 2,980 | 34.01 | £161,000 |
| London | £652.60m | 3,400 | 32.64 | £192,000 |
| South West | £308.91m | 1,775 | 31.55 | £174,000 |
| Northern Ireland | £52.59m | 252 | 18.17 | £209,000 |
| Drawn values, facility counts and facilities per 10,000 SMEs: British Business Bank GGS (including Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3) performance data as at 31 March 2026. Average facility is a BusinessExpert calculation, rounded to the nearest £1,000. Excludes 63 facilities worth £11.62m where the location could not be determined. | ||||
Take-up per 10,000 small and medium businesses is highest in the West Midlands and the North West, and lowest in Northern Ireland by a wide margin: 18.17 against a range of 31 to 47 everywhere else. The Northern Ireland figure is at least partly structural, since the Protocol caps facilities at £1m and imposes tighter subsidy limits, and fewer accredited lenders operate there. We read the rest of the table as evidence that the scheme is reaching the places outside the South East it was built to reach.
Facility and Business Characteristics
The typical scheme borrower is smaller and younger than the £45m ceiling implies. Businesses with fewer than ten employees hold 59.1% of facilities, and those with fewer than fifty hold 91.8%. On turnover, 86.1% of facilities went to businesses under £5m.
| Age of business | Facilities | Share of facilities | Drawn value | Average facility |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Less than 1 year | 1,355 | 6.4% | £324.81m | £240,000 |
| 1 to 4 years | 4,527 | 21.4% | £665.18m | £147,000 |
| 5 to 9 years | 5,941 | 28.0% | £851.89m | £143,000 |
| 10 to 14 years | 3,775 | 17.8% | £635.56m | £168,000 |
| 15 to 24 years | 3,492 | 16.5% | £669.33m | £192,000 |
| 25 to 49 years | 1,692 | 8.0% | £399.89m | £236,000 |
| 50 years or more | 412 | 1.9% | £96.41m | £234,000 |
| Facility counts and drawn values: British Business Bank GGS (including Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3) performance data as at 31 March 2026. Shares and averages are a BusinessExpert calculation; shares may not sum to 100% because of rounding. | ||||
We checked the sector split as well. Manufacturing leads on value at £569.27m across 2,812 facilities, followed by administrative and support services, construction, and accommodation and food service. That spread matters if anyone has told you the scheme is aimed at a particular industry. It is not.
Methodology and Data Limitations
One limitation governs everything in this section, and we state it plainly rather than burying it in a footnote. The British Business Bank publishes Growth Guarantee Scheme data combined with Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3, and the two cannot be separated in the published figures. So £3.64bn across 21,194 facilities is combined Growth Guarantee Scheme and Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3 lending to 31 March 2026: it is not what the Growth Guarantee Scheme alone has lent since July 2024, and it should never be quoted that way.
Three further caveats apply. The data comes from a portal that accredited lenders update themselves, so it depends on their accuracy and timeliness and is not real-time. It is dated 31 March 2026 and was extracted on 17 April 2026, so anything written since is not in it. And every share, average and percentage in this section is our own calculation from the Bank’s published totals, labelled as such under each table: the underlying counts and values are the Bank’s, the arithmetic is ours.
Is the Growth Guarantee Scheme Worth It?
Our judgement, and it is a judgement rather than a scheme rule: raise the Growth Guarantee Scheme when a lender is hesitating, not as your opening move. Get a commercial quote first, then ask the same lender what it can do under the scheme, and compare the two properly on rate, arrangement fee, term, security and any personal guarantee. A scheme facility is what you get when the commercial answer was going to be no, or a smaller sum against security you do not have.
When GGS Can Make Sense
We rate it most useful when the obstacle is security or track record rather than affordability. A profitable business with two years of trading and nothing to charge is exactly what the guarantee was built for: it gives the lender enough cover to write a facility it would otherwise decline. The same applies when you need a longer term than an unsecured commercial loan would give you, or when the amount is large relative to the assets on your balance sheet.
It also earns its place on smaller asset purchases, where the £1,000 minimum brings equipment inside the scheme that a term loan could not reach.
When a Standard Business Loan May Be Better
If you have security to offer, a strong trading record and a bank that already wants to lend to you, take the commercial quote and compare. The British Business Bank says a lender will offer better commercial terms where it can, and that is precisely the situation in which it can. A scheme facility adds a subsidy declaration, a check against your allowance and some additional paperwork: worth it for a facility you could not otherwise get, and pure friction for one you could.
Speed is the other consideration. If you need money this week, the subsidy checks and documentation are working against you, and an ordinary commercial facility is likely to complete faster. Our comparison of business loans covers the unguaranteed alternatives, and types of business loans is the place to start if you are not yet sure which product fits.
When GGS Is Unlikely to Help
The guarantee cannot fix affordability. If the numbers do not show that the business can service the debt, no accredited lender will write the facility, and applying repeatedly will collect credit searches without changing the answer. It also cannot help a business in difficulty or in insolvency proceedings, which are express exclusions rather than matters of appetite.
Two other situations are worth naming. If you need a flexible facility, the record shows nineteen revolving credit arrangements in the entire scheme, so a guaranteed overdraft is not a realistic plan. And if you have already used your subsidy allowance on grants or earlier scheme borrowing, the ceiling may be far lower than £2m or gone altogether: check that before you invest time in an application. Where the scheme is not the right route, our guide to government-backed business finance sets out the other public support a business can apply for, and alternative finance for SMEs covers the commercial options beyond bank lending.
Growth Guarantee Scheme FAQs
Does the 70% guarantee mean I only repay 30%?
No. The 70% guarantee is between the government and your accredited lender, and it pays out only after that lender has completed its normal recovery process against you. The British Business Bank states that the borrower always remains 100% liable for the debt. If the business fails, the lender pursues you for the full balance first, and any personal guarantee you signed stays enforceable afterwards.
Is the £54m turnover limit available now?
Not yet, as at 20 August 2026. The Chancellor announced on 12 July 2026 that annual turnover eligibility would rise from £45m to £54m, and the British Business Bank says it is working with accredited lenders to implement the change. The scheme remains fully operational under the existing £45m ceiling in the meantime. If your turnover sits between the two figures, ask the lender directly whether its credit policy has been updated.
Can a start-up or newer business use the Growth Guarantee Scheme?
Yes. The scheme sets no minimum trading history, and British Business Bank data to 31 March 2026 shows 1,355 facilities written to businesses less than a year old and 4,527 to businesses of one to four years: 27.8% of all facilities. Individual lenders do set their own minimum trading history, so a business can meet every scheme rule and still be declined on a lender’s policy. Specialist lenders and community development finance institutions are usually the more realistic route for a business in its first two years.
Can I apply if I previously used a Bounce Back Loan, CBILS or a Recovery Loan?
Yes. The British Business Bank confirms that businesses which took a Bounce Back Loan, CBILS, CLBILS or Recovery Loan Scheme facility before 30 June 2024 are not prevented from accessing the Growth Guarantee Scheme. Earlier borrowing can reduce the maximum you are eligible for, because some of it counts against your subsidy allowance. Recovery Loan facilities offered from 1 August 2022 count; those offered between 6 April 2021 and 30 June 2022 do not, and CBILS, CLBILS and Start Up Loans do not count at all.
Which lenders offer the Growth Guarantee Scheme?
Fifty-five lenders were listed on the British Business Bank’s accredited lender directory when we checked on 20 August 2026, ranging from high-street banks to asset finance specialists and community lenders. Accreditations change, so the directory is the only authoritative list. By value written to 31 March 2026, the largest participants were HSBC UK, Funding Circle, Close Brothers, Allica Bank and Atom Bank. No single lender offers all five supported product types.
Can one lender decline me while another accepts me?
Yes, and it is common. Credit decisions are delegated in full to the accredited lender, which applies its own criteria on trading history, sector, facility size, credit profile and affordability. Those criteria are not published, and the scheme’s own lending record shows how differently accredited lenders behave: Funding Circle has written 6,192 facilities and Santander 50. A decline tells you that one lender’s policy was not met; it does not mean your business is ineligible for the scheme.
Does the Growth Guarantee Scheme guarantee a lower interest rate?
No. The scheme sets no interest rate and caps no fee. Accredited lenders price each facility commercially, taking into account both the benefit of the guarantee and the fee they pay the government for it. The government guarantee can affect the terms a lender is prepared to offer, but it does not guarantee that a scheme-backed facility will be cheaper than an ordinary business loan. The British Business Bank states that where a lender can offer a commercial loan on better terms, it will do so.
Will I need a personal guarantee?
Possibly, and you should assume so until a lender tells you otherwise. Personal guarantees are taken at the lender’s discretion under its normal commercial lending practice. In a written parliamentary answer on 21 May 2025, the Department for Business and Trade stated that approximately 70% of facilities under the Growth Guarantee Scheme and Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3 were recorded by the lender as having a personal guarantee attached. That is historical combined data across all lenders and facility sizes, not a prediction for an individual application.
Can my home be taken as security under the scheme?
Your Principal Private Residence (the home you live in) cannot be taken as security within the Growth Guarantee Scheme, at any facility size. That restriction covers security only. A lender can still require a personal guarantee from you, and that guarantee remains enforceable against you personally. Other property you own is not covered by the restriction.
When does the Growth Guarantee Scheme end?
The scheme is funded to run until 31 March 2030, following its extension at the 2025 Spending Review. The Chancellor’s announcement of 12 July 2026 added a further £6.5bn of lending capacity over four years, which the British Business Bank expects to support around 33,000 businesses. The end date applies to when a facility can be offered, not to the term of a facility already written.
Methodology and sources
What we covered. We set out the Growth Guarantee Scheme rules that accredited lenders are applying today, kept them separate from the changes announced on 12 July 2026 and not yet in force, and analysed the scheme’s published lending record to show how it is being used in practice. We read every scheme rule from the primary source rather than from comparison-site summaries or lender marketing.
| Source | What we took from it | Underlying data date | We checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| British Business Bank, scheme page | Guarantee percentage, borrower liability, facility limits, products, terms, eligibility, pricing and personal guarantee rules | Current at the date checked | 20 August 2026 |
| British Business Bank, subsidies page | Minimal Financial Assistance and de minimis caps, which earlier facilities count against the allowance | Current at the date checked | 20 August 2026 |
| British Business Bank, GGS (including RLS 3) performance data | Facility counts, drawn values, lender, region, sector, size, turnover, age and repayment breakdowns | 31 March 2026, extracted 17 April 2026 | 20 August 2026 |
| British Business Bank, accredited lender directory | Which lenders participate and which products each offers | Live directory | 20 August 2026 |
| British Business Bank announcement, 12 July 2026 | The £54m turnover ceiling, ten-year terms, £6.5bn additional capacity and their implementation status | Announced 12 July 2026 | 20 August 2026 |
| Written parliamentary answer, UIN 52448 | Approximately 70% of GGS and RLS 3 facilities recorded as having a personal guarantee attached | Answered 21 May 2025 | 20 August 2026 |
| Accredited lender scheme pages | Which lenders publish a Growth Guarantee Scheme product page, linked from our lender table | Current at the date checked | 20 August 2026 |
Our own calculations. Every share, average and percentage drawn from the performance data is a BusinessExpert calculation from the British Business Bank’s published counts and values, labelled as such beneath each table. Averages are drawn value divided by the number of facilities, rounded to the nearest £1,000; they describe lending already completed and are not quotations, limits or predictions. Repayment illustrations assume nominal annual interest on the reducing balance with equal monthly repayments in arrears and no fees, and are not APRs.
The combined-data caveat. The British Business Bank publishes Growth Guarantee Scheme performance data combined with Recovery Loan Scheme iteration 3, and the two cannot be separated in the published figures. We have described every figure from that dataset as combined, and none of it should be read as Growth Guarantee Scheme lending alone since the scheme launched on 1 July 2024. The portal underlying it is updated by accredited lenders themselves, so it is neither real-time nor independently audited.
How we handle gaps. Where a rule was announced but is not yet in force, we have said so and given its implementation status rather than folding it into the live rules. Accredited lenders do not publish their credit criteria, minimum trading history or personal guarantee policy for scheme facilities, and we have not inferred them: where the answer sits inside a lender’s credit policy, we have said that too.
Update cadence. We re-verify this page regularly, and whenever the scheme changes its rules or limits. The July 2026 changes and the accredited lender list are both volatile, and we are rechecking them until the announced rules are in force. Some links on this page are affiliate links, see our editorial policy.
Regulatory note. This page is editorial content, not regulated financial advice. The Growth Guarantee Scheme is delivered by accredited lenders on commercial terms, and credit is subject to status and approval. A government guarantee reduces the lender’s risk, not your liability. Compare offers directly with lenders before you apply.