Leiston Friends host banking hub
'The bank is being replaced by a banking hub operated by social enterprise Cash Access Ltd...'
Leiston Meeting House is hosting a temporary banking hub as the last remaining bank in the town closed last week.
Studies show that more than 6,000 bank and building society branches have closed since 2015, negatively impacting disabled and vulnerable people.
Robert Ashton, from Leiston Meeting, told the Friend that the Meeting house stepped in after the town’s branch of Barclays closed. ‘The bank is being replaced by a banking hub operated by social enterprise Cash Access Ltd, which is a collaboration between more then two UK clearing banks.
‘Counter banking services are delivered by the Post Office, with representatives from a different bank on site each day to meet their bank’s customers. Leiston Meeting House is hosting the banking hub on a temporary basis, until a permanent home for the hub can be found in the town.’
‘We’re the first Quaker Meeting to work with Cash Access,’ added Robert Ashton, ‘and hope that others will follow our example. This collaboration both provides a valuable service to the community, and brings people into our Meeting house, some of whom we hope will want to find out more about Quakers.’
The hub was officially opened by local MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, who described the hub as ‘a vital step in supporting our community’.
A report from Which? magazine said that, over the past few years, bank and building society branches have been ‘disappearing from our high streets at a frightening pace’. According to Which?’s data, 6,303 branches have closed since January 2015, at a rate of around fifty-three each month. This represents sixty-four per cent of the branches that were open at the start of 2015, it said. ‘NatWest Group, which comprises NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank, has closed 1,431 branches – the most of any banking group. Lloyds Banking Group, made up of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, has shut down 1,321 sites.
‘Barclays is the individual bank that has reduced its network the most, with 1,236 branches now closed.’
According to Which?, the banks say the closures have been driven by a rapid increase in online and mobile banking, and a rapid decline in the use of physical branches.
A Which? survey in 2023 found that more than half of disabled bank customers have struggled to access vital banking services, despite the fact that financial firms have a legal obligation under the Equality Act 2010 to remove barriers for people with disabilities. Which?’s investigation found that 2,723 disabled customers had faced major obstacles when trying to manage their money.
