Growth Guarantee Scheme eligibility criteria

The criteria

Your business, together with its business group where relevant, must be engaged in trading activity in the UK with the core of its operations here. It must generate more than 50% of its turnover from trading activity in the UK, and have a turnover not exceeding £45 million a year on a group basis. The lender must consider the borrowing proposal viable, and the business must not be a business in difficulty, including being in relevant insolvency proceedings.

Charities and further education establishments are exempt from the 50% trading test.

Who cannot use the scheme

Banks, building societies, insurers and reinsurers (insurance brokers are allowed), public-sector bodies, state-funded primary and secondary schools, and businesses in certain mining and quarrying activities are not eligible. Those activities include mining coal and lignite, extracting crude petroleum and natural gas, and certain support activities for petroleum and natural gas extraction.

GGS is open to sole traders, corporations, limited partnerships, limited liability partnerships, co-operatives and community benefit societies, and any other legal entity carrying out business activity in the UK.

Special cases

Exporters are eligible if the facility will not be used to run an advertising campaign outside the UK, make a product only available outside the UK, set up a representative office or agent outside the UK, set up or run a distribution network outside the UK, or fulfil a direct export order. The business self-certifies this.

You do not have to be an existing customer of the lender, you do not have to have been affected by Covid-19, and businesses that used Pay As You Grow under BBLS can apply. Support from the Enterprise Investment Scheme does not stop you applying. Decisions on eligibility are delegated to the accredited lenders.

Check your answers with the GGS eligibility checker.

For amounts and terms, see borrowing limits and terms.