Start Up Loan business plan: what each part of the application needs
BusinessPlanHub Editorial Team · Published
A Start Up Loan business plan is one of three documents the Start Up Loans application assesses together. The business plan and the 12-month cash flow forecast are read for the strength and viability of the business. The personal survival budget is read for whether you, personally, can afford the repayments.
That third document is easy to treat as an afterthought, yet it is the one that ties the other two together. This page takes each thing the application asks for, says where it sits in your plan, and shows how the survival budget and the cash flow have to agree line for line. Every scheme figure below comes from startuploans.co.uk, checked on 9 October 2026.
The loan you are writing for
A Start Up Loan is a government-backed, unsecured personal loan used for a business. The scheme is run by The Start-Up Loans Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of British Business Bank plc. On its homepage it states:
- borrowing of up to £25,000, with an average loan of £10,264 (the site notes the average changes over time);
- a fixed interest rate of 7.5% a year;
- a term of one to five years;
- no fees for arranging the loan or repaying it early;
- 12 months of free mentoring for first-time recipients.
Two words in that list shape the whole plan. Personal means you repay it, not your company, whether or not the business trades as forecast. Unsecured means there is no asset standing behind it, so affordability carries the weight that collateral carries elsewhere.
Who can apply
The eligibility page lists eight conditions. You must be 18 or over, a current UK resident with the right to work in the UK, and starting a business or trading for up to 60 months. The business must be based in the UK, its type and the loan purpose must be eligible, you must be unable to get finance elsewhere (self-declaration is accepted), and you must pass credit checks and be able to afford the loan.
Some purposes are excluded outright: debt repayment, training or education, and investments that are not part of an ongoing business. So are several business types, including property investment, gambling and FCA-regulated activities. Check the list before you write a word.
What the application asks for, and where it sits in your plan
The application runs in five steps: eligibility, registration, residential information, a credit check, then your business information. Only the last one involves the plan. By then you will have passed the credit check and been given a business adviser, who reviews your documents with you before they go to assessment.
The core plan sections come from the scheme’s guide to writing a Start Up Loans business plan and its business plan template page.
| What the application asks for | Where it sits in your plan | What the assessor is looking for |
|---|---|---|
| Your business | Opening section | What you sell, where, to whom, and why you started. Not a one-word answer. |
| Business objectives, and how the loan supports them | Objectives, plus a use-of-funds line for every pound borrowed | SMART targets split into short, medium and long term; the loan visibly tied to them |
| Your skills and experience | A short profile, with a CV attached if you want | Relevant paid or voluntary work, training with dates, and how you will cover skills gaps |
| Target customers | Customer section | Who, where, how many in your target area, and a price with the margin behind it |
| Market and competition | Market section | Realistic competitors you would actually lose sales to, compared on price, quality and service |
| Sales and marketing plans | Marketing section, and the sales line of the cash flow | Your three most important promotional activities: what you do, how, how often, and the results you expect |
| Operational plans | Operations section | Premises, staff, equipment, regulations and the risks you face |
| Back-up plan | Its own section, cross-referenced to the survival budget | Your repayment amount, how you would meet it if the business struggles, and why that is realistic |
| Supporting evidence | Attachments | Not mandatory, though your adviser may ask for more: a lease for premises, a driving licence for a vehicle |
| 12-month cash flow forecast | Separate document; the plan’s financial section stays short and points to it | Whether the plan is sustainable, including your drawings and loan repayments |
| Personal survival budget | Separate document | Whether you can afford the monthly repayments |
Sources: Start Up Loans, “How to write a business plan for your Start Up Loan application”, “Business Plan template”, “How do I apply?” and “Am I eligible?”, all read 9 October 2026. The third column paraphrases the scheme’s own guidance for each section.
One row deserves a second look. The template page says that because a cash flow forecast is required, the scheme does not need much financial detail in the business plan itself, and that the two documents should be complementary. So do not paste a three-year P&L into the plan to look thorough. Put the work into the forecast, and make the plan’s targets match it.
The personal survival budget is the affordability test
A personal survival budget is your average monthly personal income minus your typical monthly personal costs. The scheme’s template page is explicit that it is a personal budget, not a business one, and that its purpose is to decide whether you can meet your monthly repayments.
It has three parts:
- Personal income (A). Salary, benefits, savings you will draw on, investment returns. The template page says three to six items is typical.
- Personal expenses (B). Rent or mortgage, council tax, utilities, childcare, existing loan repayments, groceries. Typically 10 to 20 lines.
- The balance: A minus B. Positive is a surplus. Negative is a shortfall. The scheme’s template page suggests cutting costs or bringing in new income, and its spreadsheet carries any shortfall into the cash flow as drawings.
Universal Credit does not make you ineligible, according to the eligibility page; it is one of the income streams counted when affordability is assessed.
How the survival budget and the cash flow have to agree
This is the part that is easy to miss. The scheme’s own spreadsheet links the two documents automatically, “to reflect where any shortfall in your personal budgeting may need to be made up by drawings from your business”. In plain English: whatever your personal budget is short each month, the business has to pay you.
And the cash flow template page tells you to include two lines that make that visible: the minimum salary you need from the business, and your monthly Start Up Loan repayments. So the three numbers form a chain.
The chain to check before you submit
- Survival budget shortfall per month (B minus A, if B is larger).
- Owner’s salary or drawings line in the cash flow: at least that shortfall, every month.
- Start Up Loan repayment line in the cash flow, starting soon after draw-down, as the scheme says the first payment falls. Its loan repayment calculator gives the monthly figure for your amount and term.
- Closing cash: with both lines in, does the balance stay above zero in the worst month?
- Back-up plan: if sales come in below forecast, what pays line 3?
Suppose, purely as an illustration, your personal costs come to £1,900 a month and your part-time income to £1,100. That is an £800 shortfall. Your cash flow then needs a drawings line of at least £800 a month from month one, before a single pound of profit. If month two is quiet and the business cannot pay it, the forecast has told the assessor that you cannot pay your rent. Nothing in the business plan’s prose can argue with that.
The usual mistake runs the other way: a cash flow with no drawings at all, which looks profitable sooner, sitting beside a survival budget that is £800 short. The assessor has both documents, so the gap between them is there to be seen.
What the cash flow needs beyond the link
The scheme asks for 12 months, and its tips come from its own advisers and loan assessment team. Three of them change how you build the sales line:
- estimate sales conservatively in the early months, while people are still finding out you exist;
- build seasonality in, including the quiet periods every business has;
- tie spikes in sales to specific campaigns, and lower months to periods with no marketing budget.
On the cost side, separate recurring costs such as rent, insurance and loan repayments from ad hoc costs such as materials and travel, and put quarterly VAT in the months it is actually paid. Our guide to financial projections covers building the forecast month by month, and the financial plan section of our business plan template shows where it sits in a full plan.
If you want to see a small start-up funding table laid out, the accountancy sample plan models a £40,000 launch (fictional figures) and splits its use of funds into fit-out, software, insurance, marketing and a £17,800 working capital reserve. That is the level of build-up a use-of-funds line needs: every pound of the loan named.
The back-up plan answers the question the forecast cannot
A Start Up Loans back-up plan is a short section explaining how you would keep paying the loan if the business does not go to plan. The scheme’s writing guide asks it to state three things: what your repayments are, how you would manage them after an unexpected event, and why that is realistic.
Its example is taking up or returning to employment, backed by evidence that you could actually get a job paying enough: past roles, skills, contacts. It also rules one answer out in so many words. Relying on a partner’s income is not accepted.
That is why this section belongs next to the survival budget rather than at the end of the plan. If the budget shows an £800 shortfall plus a repayment, the back-up plan has to name an income that covers both, not just the repayment.
What a Start Up Loan plan does not need
It does not need to be long. The scheme says you may submit your own template if it carries similar information, and its own plan template keeps the financial section light because the forecast does that job. It does not need three-year projections; the stated requirement is 12 months. And it does not need investor-style market sizing. A local trade needs the number of likely customers in your area and the competitors they would otherwise use.
It does need to be consistent. Three documents, written at different times, read by one assessor. The plan’s objectives, the forecast’s sales line and the survival budget’s shortfall have to describe the same business and the same person. That is the standard: nobody is promised a loan for meeting it, and the decision, including the credit check, sits with Start Up Loans.
Your first step
Fill in the personal survival budget before you touch the business plan. It takes an evening, and the shortfall it produces is the minimum your business has to pay you each month. Every other number in the application has to respect it.
If the numbers will not reconcile, or you are applying for more than one source of funding and the plan has to serve a bank as well, that is where doing it alone gets slow. A free 30-minute call is the place to start, and our business plan for a business loan is written for you, around the lender you are applying to.