Following a period of discussion between the Government and the major UK banks1 known as ‘Project Merlin’, a statement was made by the banks on 9 February 2011. As part of that, the banks stated a capacity and willingness to lend £190 billion of new credit to businesses in 2011, with £76 billion of this lending capacity allocated to small and medium-sized enterprises. If demand exceeds this, the banks committed to lend more.
As a part of the accord, the banks agreed to make gross lending data available to the Bank of England, for publication in aggregate on a quarterly basis. These data cover lending to all businesses and lending to small and medium-sized enterprises in particular, defined under the ‘Project Merlin’ agreement as gross lending facilities. The Bank intends to publish the data for 2011 Q4, alongside existing measures of gross and net lending reported by the major UK banks on the basis used in the Bank’s Trends in Lending publication, on its website at 9:30am on Monday 13 February 2012.
The data will be available for access via Bank’s website at: