Several housing associations included in Bank of England coronavirus bond purchase scheme

The bank’s monetary policy committee voted in 2016 to maintain the stock of corporate bond purchases at £10bn after the programme was first launched.

But chancellor Rishi Sunak gave the bank permission to increase this limit to £20bn in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

The BoE scheme includes bonds across nine sectors including property and finance, industrial and transport, energy and communications.

The package comes as Sanctuary and Optivo managed to secure bonds worth £350m and £250m respectively despite turbulent market conditions.

Paul Hackett, chief executive of Optivo, said his organisation’s bond issue was a “sign of confidence in the sector’s financial strength and an expectation that we’ll bounce back quickly once the nation emerges from lockdown”.

Mr Sunak also unveiled the Covid Corporate Financing Facility to help larger firms with cash flows by buying up short-term debt.

“The (CCFF) facility is designed to support liquidity among larger firms, helping them to bridge coronavirus disruption to their cashflows through the purchase of short-term debt in the form of commercial paper,” the bank said.

Update at 12:25pm 16/04/20: Story edited to clarify that the CBPS and the CCFF are not related, they are two separate schemes.