The Bank of England has recently reported that the level of lending to businesses in the UK has been falling. The figures were released in the central bank’s recently released Trends in Lending report, and showed that in October there had been a slightly bigger fall in lending to businesses than in the previous month.

The fall resulted in a 7.6 percent drop in the annual rate of net lending, which has been driven to its lowest level in a decade.

The figures in the Trends in Lending report showed that for the month of October there was a fall in lending by UK banks to businesses of £4.8 billion, and this was slightly higher than the fall that was seen in the previous month, which stood at £4.6 billion.

The Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, said that the figures showed that many businesses were still in the throes of a credit crunch, and that the measures and steps that had been taken by the Labour government clearly hadn’t had the desired effect because businesses were clearly still struggling to get the credit that they needed from the UK’s banks.

Economist, Vicky Redwood, said that it was likely that in the near future lending to businesses would remain subdued, and that there was doubt that there would be any significant pick up in bank lending over the course of next year. She added that for the foreseeable future credit conditions would remain restricted in the UK, and that amongst the groups that would be most affected would be consumers and smaller businesses.

Following the release of the report George Osborne stated: “The continuing decline in credit to business… revealed today shows that all those Government recession schemes have failed and the credit crunch continues for many smaller businesses.”

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