PLANS to create up to 100 jobs at an air-conditioning firm in West Horndon have had to be put on ice because of its banks' lending policy to small businesses
That is the claim from management at CS Group, which employs 60 people at its headquarters at Horndon Industrial Park and two other sites in the south east.
Since September the company has been searching for extra finance to enable it to trade out of the economic downturn.
However, they have found it difficult to secure £350,000 loans from Barclays and NatWest, both of whom CS Group already banks with.
Chief executive officer Steve Kelly, who set up the company on his own 10 years ago, claimed his firm has found it difficult to secure loans from NatWest because they are wrongly classified as a construction firm – something which "scares them off".
And he said Barclays recommended they did not apply.
Father-of-two Mr Kelly, from Long Ridings Avenue, in Hutton, says he is "completely disgusted" that the banks, one of which is part-owned by British taxpayers, are not willing to help a local business to expand and create more jobs.
He said: "NatWest are the bad boys in my view because with them being owned by the people, supposedly – it's a poor show.
"We've got a good company here, we've gone from one person up to 60 people in the last 10 years and we've done that with no finance at all from the banks.
"We're just frustrated because we keep bouncing off a brick wall at the moment.
"We physically can't find a way forward to speed up what we're trying to do.
"We will get there eventually but it's just going to be another 10 years of struggling – come on, businesses need finance."
Both banks also refused CS Group's request to simplify their banking arrangements to have one overdraft facility across all of their businesses, rather than individual reserves for each.
During a recent visit to the firm, Brentwood and Ongar's Conservative MP Eric Pickles agreed there was too much of a "computer says no" approach among some major banks.
The local government secretary added: "It's pretty clear that we need this kind of operation to ensure that installations that were made a few years ago, that weren't as sensitive to the environment, are replaced by the state of the art – by what's been offered by CS Group."
A spokesman for Barclays said: "We are very surprised that it is being reported that we declined this lending application. As far as we're concerned we had informal discussions last October to discuss in principle a lending request.
"The discussions concluded that we would be happy to meet up again in 2013 and a meeting is currently being arranged."
A spokesman for RBS group said: "We are not able to discuss any case with you without the customer's written authority."