The The UK economy has learnt to live with lockdowns, bouncing back more quickly than previously thought, the latest GDP figures show an upwards revision of 0.3 percentage points.

The ONS said there is “little change” to its earlier estimate of UK GDP for 2020 as whole, which is now estimated to have contracted by 9.8%, slightly revised from the first estimate of a 9.9% decline.

GDP in Q2 2020 is estimated to have fallen 19.5%, a downwards revision of 0.5 percentage points, and in Q3 is estimated to have grown by 16.9%, an upwards revision of 0.8 percentage points.

Douglas Grant, director of Conister, commented: “GDP numbers are starting to show stability and perhaps some signs of a potential recovery as markets look forward to the UK regaining its pre-Covid economic potential. The UK remains among the best in the world in terms of vaccination rates, but the economy is yet to really feel the long-term effects of many people losing their jobs and businesses disappearing.

“While the BBLS and CBILS played instrumental roles in keeping many resilient SMEs alive and acted as important triage systems to identify and support viable businesses that needed credit, we must now accept that we have passed this triage phase and instead it is imperative that we identify, prioritise and protect our most resilient individual business sectors and segments.

“We have allocated our full CBIL and BBL allocation and have applications which we hope can be accredited under the new government support scheme, the Recovery Loan Scheme, which comes into being on the 6th of April. Without doubt, the scale of applications was enormous and so we applied for and received an additional allocation of £5 million for the CBILS scheme and we will focus lending this to robust business sectors that we believe will thrive in the future.”

Conister will continue to do all it can, working alongside Government and traditional lenders, to support British businesses.”