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Business: Debts

Answer

BEIS does not hold data on the total debt incurred by all businesses. However, UK Finance (a trade body for the banking and finance industry) does hold end of year loan balances, both private and government-backed, and overdraft balances for SMEs only and by UK regions. SMEs are defined by UK Finance as those businesses with total annual turnover under £25 million.

The total loan and overdraft balances for all UK businesses, including large businesses, was £279bn in 2018, £270bn in 2019, and £290bn in 2020 – a 3.2% decrease between 2018 and 2019, and 7.3% increase between 2019 and 2020.

Tables 1 & 2 below provide end of year breakdowns of loan and overdraft balances for SMEs only by region for 2018, 2019 and 2020; the most recent data available. Data by constituency is not readily available.

Table 1: Total SMEs end of year loan balance (£ billion & percent change from previous year)

Year	2018	2019	2020
London	£18.5bn	£17.5bn (-5.4%)	£27.7bn (+58.2%)
South East	£10.5bn	£10.2bn (-2.1%)	£16.4bn (+59.9%)
South West	£9.6bn	£9.5bn (-1.3%)	£13.1bn (+38.1%)
East Midlands	£4.5bn	£4.4bn (-1.9%)	£6.8bn (+53.4%)
West Midlands	£7.3bn	£7.2bn (-2.4%)	£10.7bn (+49.2%)
East of England	£5.7bn	£5.7bn (-1.0%)	£8.4bn (+47.7%)
Yorkshire & Humber	£5.9bn	£5.7bn (-4.2%)	£8.7bn (+54.6%)
North East	£2.7bn	£2.5bn (-4.8%)	£3.8bn (+51.4%)
North West	£7.9bn	£7.6bn (-4.2%)	£12.2bn (+59.0%)
Wales	£3.7bn	£3.6bn (-4.3%)	£4.9bn (+37.7%)
Scotland	£6.8bn	£6.9bn (+1.5%)	£10.4bn (+50.8%)
Northern Ireland	£6.8bn	£6.5bn (-4.3%)	£7.2bn (+10.8%)
Total	£89.9bn	£87.3bn (-3.0%)	£130.3bn (+49.3%)

Source: UK Finance

Table 2: Total SMEs end of year overdrawn balance (£ billion & percent change from previous year)

Year	2018	2019	2020
London	£1.6bn	£1.4bn (-13.1%)	£0.9bn (-35.9%)
South East	£0.9bn	£0.9bn (-0.4%)	£0.6bn (-40.4%)
South West	£1.0bn	£0.9bn (-6.4%)	£0.6bn (-36.8%)
East Midlands	£0.5bn	£0.5bn (-5.4%)	£0.3bn (-35.8%)
West Midlands	£0.9bn	£0.8bn (-2.5%)	£0.6bn (-29.3%)
East of England	£0.7bn	£0.7bn (-3.3%)	£0.5bn (-32.3%)
Yorkshire & Humber	£0.7bn	£0.7bn (-5.5%)	£0.5bn (35.4%)
North East	£0.3bn	£0.3bn (-0.8%)	£0.2bn (-16.6%)
North West	£0.9bn	£0.8bn (-5.2%)	£0.5bn (-36.3%)
Wales	£0.4bn	£0.4bn (-2.6%)	£0.3bn (-34.4%)
Scotland	£0.9bn	£0.8bn (-6.1%)	£0.6bn (-30.8%)
Northern Ireland	£1.0bn	£0.9bn (-9.3%)	£0.8bn (-17.0%)
Total SMEs	£9.9bn	£9.3bn (-6.1%)	£6.3bn (-32.6%)

Source: UK Finance

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

68280

Session

2021-22

Subjects

Debts Business Coronavirus

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk