• British Business Bank lending to the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector through the programme reaches £269.76m
• Total lending through the Bank's structured guarantee programmes surpasses £5bn
• Over 300 smaller businesses in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors supported by the ENABLE Guarantees programme
• Lending in the Nations and regions outside London and the South East totals more than £3bn.

The British Business Bank has reached the landmark milestone of £250m of lending to the agriculture, forestry, and fishing sectors across its ENABLE Guarantees programme. Nearly £85m of that total was provided over the last financial year.

Over 300 smaller businesses in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors have benefitted from lending through the programme. The increased availability of finance reaching these smaller businesses, that may not otherwise have done so, ultimately supports them to invest, grow and create jobs in the UK.

This comes as the British Business Bank has reached a major milestone, delivering £5bn in lending through its structured guarantee programmes, comprising ENABLE Guarantees and ENABLE Build. Of this total, over £3bn has been directed to businesses outside London and the South East, with around £500m provided to each of the North West, East Midlands, and East of England, supporting regional growth and access to finance.

Since 2017, the Bank's structured guarantee programmes have encouraged both bank and non-bank lenders to expand lending to UK smaller businesses. They provide a government-backed guarantee on portfolios of new or existing smaller business loans, helping reduce lender risk.

Agriculture, forestry and fishing received the sixth highest level of support across all sectors benefitting from the ENABLE Guarantees programme, underlining its importance to the UK economy. Other notable sectors include the construction and housing sector, for which lending through the structured guarantee programmes has surpassed the £2.3bn mark, including c.£1.2bn under ENABLE Build, while over £800m has been provided to the retail sector since FY 2017/18.

Accredited lenders for the ENABLE Guarantees programme include Chester-based Oxbury Bank, whose singular focus is on farmers, food production and the rural economy. It combines its own proprietary digital banking platform, OxburyEarth, with a team of dedicated relationship managers providing a wealth of agricultural experience and banking advice for clients. Since partnering in 2023, the British Business Bank has increased its ENABLE Guarantees transaction with Oxbury Bank to £300m, unlocking £150m of additional lending capacity.

The schemes are open to a wide range of UK and foreign lenders that are active in the UK market.

Together, these initiatives support the British Business Bank's mission to promote sustainable growth by improving access to finance for smaller businesses across the UK.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, said: "Our work with the British Business Bank is one of many levers we are pulling to go further and faster in our mission to deliver economic growth for the entire country and put more money in people's pockets.

"This £5bn lending milestone is our Plan for Change in action, with the programmes delivering much-needed investment to areas outside London and the South East."

Michael Strevens, Managing Director, Structured Financial Institutions, British Business Bank said: "It's incredibly rewarding to reflect on the volume of lending to smaller and medium-sized businesses in rural industries that we've helped support over the years. Our focus has always been on evolving our support to strengthen UK businesses, and it's encouraging to see those efforts bearing fruit."

Ravi Anand, Managing Director of ThinCats, a delivery partner and alternative finance provider across all sectors, said: "The British Business Bank's ENABLE Guarantees programme has been a huge contribution to the £1bn of funding we have undertaken post COVID. The scheme 'does what it says on the tin'— enabling senior bank appetite to allow ThinCats to fund growth initiatives of UK mid-sized SMEs and in turn enabling a positive contribution to UK GDP". 

Tables of sectors and regions

Data as at 31^st December 2024*

*Limitations and further considerations

• The nature of the programmes means we receive only unique identifiers per underlying small and medium-sized business but these are specific to the delivery partner, as a result the number of small and medium-sized business is not a unique count as we are unable to identify whether a business has a loan with more than one of our delivery partners.
• Due to reporting limitations, the sum of the individual region and sector flow and small and medium-sized business values will not add up to the same value and will not match the total value of lending, as not all delivery partners provide SIC and region data for all their facilities. Additionally, some businesses can fall within multiple regions and sectors.
• Redacted: Where we have less than 5 medium-sized businesses, the values have been redacted so that businesses cannot be identified.