Commenting on the issue in a statement sent to Recruiter this morning, Tom Hadley, director of policy and campaigns at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, said cashflow is the major challenge for recruiters, which is why the loan scheme needs to deliver. 

“Issues flagged by industry leaders around eligibility, consistency and speed of process must be addressed as a matter of urgency. 

“Since the start of the crisis, we have seen widespread collaboration across the business community. This helped to bring about the unprecedented support measures for employers and workers. This sense of solidarity and common cause must continue and ensure that the financial services sector provides the best possible support to recruiters at this difficult time.”

In the spirit of that widespread collaboration, APSCo CEO Ann Swain has taken the campaign to government, writing to both the economic secretary to Treasury, John Glen, and Keith Morgan, CEO of the British Business Bank.

In her letter, which Recruiter has seen, Swain writes to highlight challenges APSCo members have experienced when applying for finance through the scheme.

These challenges include:

• A lack of transparency around eligibility and the criteria applied.
• Disparate approaches taken by the banks, particularly on eligibility.
• Requirements for personal guarantees and extremely high rates of interest, despite the government backed security.
• Sales techniques adopted to persuade customers to use other, non-government banked, forms of credit.

Consequently, Swain calls for:

• Transparent, publicly available guidance to be issued by the British Business Bank directed at the banks, on applying discretion in decision making on eligibility, credit worthiness and appropriateness of the scheme to individual circumstances.
• Public, auditable and swift measurement of the banks' adherence to such guidance, giving credit for transparency, speed of processing of applications, numbers and value of loans provided under the scheme.

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