Growth Guarantee Scheme – £6.5bn on the table, and hardly anyone in Sussex or Surrey is asking for it. Here is how it helps
In July the government put another £6.5bn behind the Growth Guarantee Scheme. It is expected to reach around 33,000 businesses over the next four years (British Business Bank, 12 July 2026).
Since it opened in 2024 the scheme has put £3.7bn to work through 70 accredited lenders. Roughly seven facilities in ten have gone to businesses outside London and the South East.
Some of that is deliberate. The scheme is meant to reach the places where funding is supposedly the hardest to find. But it also means a great many businesses across Sussex and Surrey have never had it put in front of them, and a fair few have been declined for something the scheme would have covered. It really frustrates me.
I had a call in the spring from a design and fit-out firm near Burgess Hill. Twelve staff, order book full, eight years of accounts you could frame. Their bank declined a £200,000 facility because there was nothing to secure it against beyond a few vans. Nobody at the bank mentioned the scheme. We placed it elsewhere in two weeks.
So here is what the Growth Guarantee Scheme actually does, in plain English, and the two jobs it does that almost nobody realises.
It isn’t about turning a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’ for a deal that never stacked up, it is about ensuring the deal that should stack up does.
The scheme gives the lender a 70% government guarantee against the balance left over if things go badly wrong, after the lender has finished its normal recovery process.
Read that carefully and read it again, because it is the bit people get wrong. The guarantee protects the lender. It does not protect you. You remain 100% liable for every penny, exactly as with any commercial loan. It is not a grant and it is not insurance. It is there to limit the lender’s potential loss and shift the balance toward lending that would otherwise be borderline, or allow a lender to reduce the cost of their borrowing because their end risk is lower.
Think of it as a reference rather than a subsidy. It is the same reason a first-time renter with a guarantor gets the flat: the landlord is more comfortable, but the tenant still pays the rent every month.
What that comfort buys you is a yes where you would otherwise have had a ‘no’, and often better terms than the ‘no’ would have been worth. The growth guarantee scheme facility itself is an ordinary commercial one, priced commercially, from a real lender (British Business Bank).
Three things moved on 12 July.
The turnover ceiling rose from £45m to £54m, which brings in a decent number of established Sussex and Surrey firms that had grown out of the old limit.
The scheme got another £6.5bn of capacity, which matters mainly because it means lenders are not rationing it.
And the maximum term went from six years to ten. That third one sounds like paperwork. It is the most useful change of the lot. It is also another part of the growth guarantee scheme that is missunderstood. The ‘guarantee’ can last for up to ten years – that doesn’t mean the loan term is limited to ten years, it simply means the rest of the loan period is outside of the guarantee. Why? Because if you have a ten year track record and have repaid the loan that long the lender should no longer need the reassurance – make sense?
Either way, affordability is arithmetic, and the arithmetic just got kinder. Our repayment calculators will show you the shape of it in about a minute.
This is where the scheme earns its keep locally.
Look at the make-up of the business base round here. West Sussex has more than 42,600 businesses employing 379,000 people, and 97% of them are micro or small (West Sussex Economic Strategy 2025–2035). Surrey has around 62,000 businesses, of which 90.7% employ fewer than ten people (Business Surrey).
Overwhelmingly these are service businesses. Consultancies, agencies, care providers, IT firms, recruiters, trades. Good margins, real profits, loyal customers, and almost no hard assets on the balance sheet.
Traditional lending struggles with that. The credit paper asks what happens if the business stops paying, and the honest answer is not much. So the application dies, not because the business is weak but because there is nothing to point a valuer at.
The growth guarantee scheme fills exactly that hole. Term loans, overdrafts, invoice finance and asset-based lending all sit within the scheme, up to £2m per business group. It is worth knowing that not every accredited lender offers every product, which is precisely why it pays to look across the panel rather than at one bank. If a facility that flexes with your trading would suit you better than a fixed loan, revolving credit is worth a look alongside it.
And one protection worth stating plainly: your home cannot be taken as security under this scheme. Personal guarantees remain at the lender’s discretion, as in any commercial lending, but your principal private residence is off the table by the scheme’s own rules. Personal guarantees can be insured to cover your risk so this can be mitigated.
This is the part almost no business owner knows about, and I think it is the more valuable of the two. It is also the part we see as the biggest benefit of the growth guarantee scheme, especially for businesses around Sussex and Surrey.
The scheme can sit behind a commercial mortgage on premises your business occupies. Atom Bank, to take one accredited lender, writes owner-occupied property mortgages under the scheme from £250,000 to £2m, on retail units, warehouses and care homes among others (Atom Bank).
My experience is that clients have seen commercial mortgage offered where it wouldn’t otherwise have been possible, this has had a massive positive impact for businesses. An asset purchased, under their control, and usually with outgoings lower than the rent they were paying. This is an example of exactly that scenario which completed last year.
Commercial property across Sussex and Surrey is not cheap, and the gap between what a lender will advance and what an owner has in the bank is where most purchases quietly die. A guarantee behind the loan can move a lender further up the loan to value than it would otherwise go.
The businesses this suits are the ones paying rent on premises they have occupied for years, watching the landlord’s asset appreciate. Buying the freehold turns a permanent cost into an owned asset and takes rent reviews out of your life for good. If that describes you, our commercial mortgages page sets out how the lending itself works, and I have written separately on using the scheme for a commercial mortgage.
I would rather tell you the limits now than after you have got your hopes up.
It is for premises your business trades from, not for buy-to-let or investment property. It is not available to a business already in difficulty or in insolvency proceedings, so it is a growth tool rather than a rescue one. Every lender still applies its own credit policy on top, meaning a proposal has to stand up commercially before the growth guarantee scheme is even considered. And it is still debt, which has to be repaid whatever happens. Remember that we will work with you here, tell us what you want and we will guide you through it.
The one exception to the growth framing is refinancing. The scheme will take on borrowing you already have and reset it on longer, cheaper terms, which is easily the most underused feature of the whole thing. I have covered that ground properly in a separate piece on refinancing existing borrowing, so I will not repeat it here.
There is a pattern in the Surrey data that has stuck with me.
Businesses here survive unusually well. Ninety-four per cent make it past a year and 44% past five, both ahead of the national picture. But the birth rate is only 9.6% against 11.5% nationally, and just 0.34% of enterprises count as high growth against 0.39% across the country.
So we start fewer, we keep more, and we grow them more slowly.
Steady is not a criticism. It is how most good businesses are run. But some of that caution is not really caution, it is a business owner who asked once, was told no, and quietly filed the ambition away. That is the group this scheme was designed for, and it is the group least likely to hear about it.
I left banking because of what I watched happen in 2008. Solvent businesses had facilities pulled from underneath them and years of work vanished inside a fortnight. It is the reason Lime exists.
What I did not expect, all these years later, is how much of the job is simply telling people what is available. Not clever structuring. Just information that should have reached them years ago. It pretty much sums up all good government schemes, growth guarantee scheme included, the message is just never commincated properly.
I watch a lot of cricket, and the innings that win matches are rarely the ones full of sixes. They are built in ones and twos by somebody who stayed in. A growth guarantee scheme facility at a payment you can comfortably meet is a very ordinary-looking thing that quietly changes what a business can do.
If you have been declined in the last two years, ask whether the growth guarantee scheme was ever considered. Often it was not. Many high street bank relationship managers do not raise it, and you are entitled to ask the question.
If you are renting premises you intend to stay in, get the purchase costed properly. Not a rough guess over coffee. Deposit, stamp duty, fees, monthly payment against your current rent, side by side.
If you already have borrowing on short or expensive terms, look at the monthly figure before you decide you cannot afford to invest. It is often not the case.
And if your bank has said no, remember that seventy accredited lenders sit behind this scheme, and challenger and specialist banks now account for 60% of gross SME bank lending, up from 39% in 2012 (British Business Bank). One decline is one opinion. Working out which of those lenders fits your situation is most of what a broker is for.
If any of this sounds like your business – growth funding, a freehold purchase, or borrowing that has stopped fitting – I am always happy to have that conversation. You can see how we have structured deals for other businesses, or simply book a call when it suits you.
The growth guarantee scheme exists and remains underused.
David Farmer
Lime Finance Solutions
Yes, provided your own business occupies the property. Accredited lenders write owner-occupied commercial mortgages under the scheme, typically from £250,000 up to the £2m ceiling. Investment and buy-to-let property fall outside it.
No, and this trips people up. The growth guarantee scheme is great but it isn’t that good! The 70% guarantee protects the lender, not the borrower. You stay fully liable for the debt, the same as with any commercial facility.
Not under this scheme. A principal private residence cannot be taken as security. Personal guarantees are still possible at the lender’s discretion, so always ask what is being requested before you sign anything.
Working capital, equipment, hiring, buying premises your business trades from, funding an order book, or refinancing existing debt. It is intended for genuine business purposes in a viable business, not for investment property. Think anything that improves the trading performance of the business directly.
Since July the turnover ceiling is £54m, up from £45m, measured across the group. There is no formal minimum, and plenty of facilities go to businesses with a handful of staff. Because of what the scheme is, the biggest demand is going to be at the smaller end of the turnover limit.
No. Earlier government-backed borrowing does not disqualify you, though what you still owe will feature in the affordability assessment like any other commitment. In reality, the majority of this borrowing is now repaid, or close to being fully repaid so it has an ever diminishing impact on things anyway.
For unsecured facilities, very quick. Anything secured on property runs to a valuation and legal timetable, so allow two to three months and start before you need the money. The biggest delay with almost any commercial finance, growth guarantee scheme included, is the borrower getting their paperwork in order. This means the time it takes is largely in your hands.
Figures correct as at 20 August 2026. The Growth Guarantee Scheme is delivered by accredited lenders and administered by the British Business Bank on behalf of the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. Lending criteria, pricing and product availability vary by lender and are subject to status.
Over 30 years finance experience. Former credit underwriter, founder of Lime Finance Solutions in 2012. Multi Award winning business, featured in Sunday Telegraph, Parliamentary Review, Sky TV and others. Regular contributor to press and business associations. FCA Authorised, ALIBF Qualified. Specialist in Commercial Mortgages, Business Lending, Property and Development Finance.
Tel: 01293 541333
Email: hello@lime-fs.com
Tel: 0207 866 2102
Email: hello@lime-fs.com
Tel: 01293 541333
Email: hello@lime-fs.com
Tel: 0207 866 2102
Email: hello@lime-fs.com
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