Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to ensure that high street lenders do not require firms to conduct costly third party audits before being considered for a loan under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme.

There are now over 90 accredited lenders of CBILS and individual lending decisions remain at the discretion of these lenders. We would expect a lender to follow its normal credit policy when assessing security. There has been significant demand for the Scheme and lenders are fully aware of the current urgency, so we expect them to respond appropriately to their customers’ needs.

Since the CBILS was introduced, Government has made several improvements to speed up the application process and ensure businesses are getting the support they need. These include:

- Clarifying that all lenders should use automated, rather than manual, credit checks when assessing the viability of a business;

- Removing the forward-looking viability test;

- Removing the per lender portfolio cap; and

- Removing any requirement for the main lenders to interact with the British Business Bank systems before issuing loans.