At last,the big banks are making a genuine attempt to ease the credit squeeze that threatened to strangle many smaller contractors of cash to pay suppliers and workers.
This is long overdue good news for contractors, even if the message from banking head office is filtering too slowly to branch level.
But just as we make some progress, a new bogeyman appears - the insurance sector, which is taking a damaging view of risk.
What is particularly alarming is the soaring cost of credit insurance for thousands of contractors and the fact that it is even being refused to companies with solid track records. This creates a dangerous time bomb because it impacts on the entire supply chain, from main contractor, to trade contractor, to supplier.
New government plans to get the jobless back to work with golden hello payments will be wasted if businesses start going to the wall when their clients fail. Construction runs the very real risk of seeing swathes of unnecessary job losses because isolated trading problems are magnified as they domino through the industry in a dangerous chain reaction.
It is time the government realised dire problems are being stored up and intervened in the insurance market, if only to stop risks being exaggerated into punitive premiums.
In this area, the French government is taking a very sensible lead by making itself the insurer of last resort. Gordon Brown should follow suit.
Have you been affected by cuts in credit insurance cover? Let us know by posting below.
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