The shocking stories of how our high street banks broke hundreds of family businesses

Former BBC Correspondents, Steve Brodie and Emily Buchanan, have spent years following the fate of people who say their businesses were destroyed by the practices of our high street banks; banks which only survived the crash of 2008 with the help of vast taxpayer bailouts. What they have discovered is a story of  how those too small to resist were sacrificed to save those too big to fail.

Business owners and farmers who expected support from their lender through hard times instead found themselves in bank recovery units where they were not rescued but were driven under so that the bank could seize their assets.

The tactics unearthed are shocking.  Financial products added to loans so the business became unknowingly weighed down with extra liabilities.  Loans sold as underwritten by the government when it was the banks not the business owners who would be refunded.  Funds transferred between accounts without consent to stretch a business to its limits. Whatever the method, and there were many more, the inevitable default would lead to aggressive enforcement of debt. 

The pair have also spoken to whistleblowers, ex-bank managers and industry insiders who reveal the scale of these practices and the incentives for carrying them through.

The human cost of the banks’ actions has been immense. Proud entrepreneurs have seen their once successful businesses dragged down leaving families torn apart and homes repossessed. Many have taken their own lives.  

Brodie and Buchanan point to numerous failures by the police, the regulators and politicians while customers endure endless court hearings against impossibly well-funded opponents. 

Largely overlooked until now, A Very British Banking Scandal exposes, yet again, how our culture of nods, winks and networks protects those in power but leaves a trail of misery in its wake.