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LONDON (Reuters) - A key manufacturing survey rose to its highest level in over 15 years last month, and banks said they planned to step up corporate lending, in signs on Thursday that the recovery is gaining strength.

However, the improvement is likely to take longer to filter through to households. The CIPS/Markit PMI purchasing managers' survey reported a small fall in factory employment, and a separate study showing less generous collective pay deals.

The main news in support of recovery on Thursday was a rise in the headline manufacturing PMI index to 57.2 from 56.5, a bigger jump than economists had forecast and the index's highest level since October 1994, when the economy was also emerging from recession.

With some caveats, economists treat the PMI and its output component as a proxy for growth in factory production, and Capital Economics estimated that it pointed to a quarterly rise in manufacturing output of just under 2 percent, almost double the 1.0 percent growth shown in official data for January.