The chancellor needs to get on with implementing plans for its state-backed Business Bank to allow staffing companies to grow, says Peter Lowman, managing director of LoveWorkLife, a specialist consultancy that advises recruitment companies.

The Business Bank was first announced by business secretary Vince Cable as a way of boosting funding to UK businesses.  

Yesterday, the chancellor announced that he was setting out the schedule for the government’s Business Bank. According to the Treasury’s Red Book, which accompanies the Budget, it is due to start investing in 2013 and is expected to be fully operational from 2014.

However, Lowman urged the chancellor “to get on with it to make sure that small businesses have the funding they need”. 

He tells Recruiter that the lack of traditional funding from banks is holding staffing companies back.

“There are people out there in the recruitment sector that could grow but they cannot get the funding to do it.” Lowman adds that a properly functioning Business Bank would do more to kick-start employment in the sector than the planned cut in National Insurance Contributions for employers.”