UK lessor Syscap has called for the government to extend its lending schemes to non-bank asset finance firms after it emerged lending through the programmes fell in every quarter of 2012.

Lending through the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG), which was launched in 2009 to boost lending to SMEs which lacked adequate security for a loan, dropped 26% in the last quarter of the year compared to the previous three months, according to data from the Bank of England (BoE).

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Lending through the scheme has fallen almost continuously quarter-by-quarter since its peak of £254.9m (€300m) in the third quarter of 2009 to £70.7m by the end of last year.

Funding for Lending, a separate lending scheme launched in the summer of 2012 which gives lenders access to cheap Treasury funding to pass on to businesses, failed to meet its ambitions to stimulate business lending.

Figures from the BoE, which runs the scheme in conjunction with the Treasury, showed net lending to businesses fell by £4.5bn in the final quarter of the year.

Philip White, chief executive of Syscap, said: "We now have two major schemes aimed at getting finance to small business that are not achieving as much as was hoped."

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"However, with the risk of a triple-dip recession still looming, we think it is important that the Government should not give up just yet on using the EFG and Funding for Lending to get more money to the businesses that need it."

"In our view the schemes’ performance could be turned around by enabling a wider range of lenders to utilise them: extending the EFG scheme to leases and opening the Funding for Lending Scheme to asset finance providers that are not bank-owned."

White made a similar call in September 2012 and said the government had "all but given up" on stimulating lending to small businesses.

In his 2013 budget announcement on 20 March Chancellor George Osborne said the government was "actively considering" extending the Funding for Lending programme.

Osborne also mentioned a further proposed scheme, the Business Bank, which the Finance & Leasing Association (FLA) has previously called for leasing to be included in, but failed to provide any detail on the how the programme could work.

Figures from the FLA showed asset finance lending was up 3% year-on-year in 2012 to £21.4bn which Syscap’s White said shows the industry is able to fulfil demand for finance which is not being met elsewhere.