Originally written by Anna Jordan on Small Business
New figures show that most small businesses can’t access the government’s emergency coronavirus funding despite wanting to take advantage of it.
One set of statistics from UK Finance reveals that just 2,022 loans have been made to UK SMEs through the government’s Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), with less than 1pc of enquiries resulting in these loans.
Meanwhile, the Corona Business Impact Tracker from the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) measures the impact of coronavirus on businesses as well as the effectiveness of the government’s emergency actions. The latest polling took place from 1-3 April and received 1000 responses.
The tracker shows that awareness of the schemes is high: 59pc knew about the CBILS and 19pc planned to use it. Fewer business owners (42pc) knew about the grants available to small businesses and 24pc planned to use it.
Polling numbers say that 8pc of respondents were unsuccessful in getting access to the CBILS. They cite that the application process was slow and that they couldn’t get responses from the relevant body. The BCC is optimistic that successful applications will increase in the coming weeks.
As for the grant schemes, 7pc of respondents were using them at the