Backing the UK through COVID-19

In March, the rhinos, gorillas and other exotic animals at the Aspinall Foundation’s wildlife parks were looking forward to thousands of people visiting them during the Easter holidays and summer months. Instead, Covid-19 forced the parks to close, leaving the owners with more than 1,300 animals to feed and care for, but no income with which to do so.

Fortunately, the Aspinall Foundation was able to turn to their Relationship Director at Barclays, who understood their business and approved a £2 million loan through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) to help them through this very difficult period.

Hundreds of thousands of UK businesses found themselves in similar situations, and Barclays moved quickly to back our customers. Within six months of the launch of the government’s business support schemes, Barclays had provided companies across the UK with more than £23 billion of finance.

In every corner of the UK, Barclays has been able to mobilise this much-needed help for local businesses. So far, we have approved more than 275,000 Bounce Back Loans to the UK’s smallest businesses and more than £11.9 billion of paper issuance to larger corporates as part of the Covid Corporate Finance Facility.

Beyond this, we have also launched our £100 million Covid-19 Community Aid Fund to help charities working to support vulnerable people impacted by the virus and alleviate the associated social and economic hardship. As our Group CEO, Jes Staley, has said: ‘We have been doing all we can to look after our customers, clients and colleagues through this crisis. We want to do more to back the communities in which we live and work.’

While we do not know how long Covid-19 will be with us, we do know that creating jobs and growth will be vital to enabling the UK’s society to look to the future with hope and optimism.