Banks have broken their promise to increase lending to small businesses under the Government’s Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme (EFGS), it has been claimed.

Clifton Asset Management says that, according to official figures the amount of cash filtering through to UK SMEs in the year to March 31 was significantly less than the previous year through the EFGS and its predecessor, the Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme.

“This was supposed to be a major plank in the Government’s response to the banking crisis and freeze in lending