Community Bank Closures — House of Commons, 2018-02-08
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Philip Wilson (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) and the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) on securing the debate At the end of June, four bank branches will close in my constituency of Sedgefield. NatWest is closing two branches, one in Ferryhill and one in Newton Aycliffe, Santander is to close its branch in Newton Aycliffe, which is just across the street from the NatWest branch that is to close, and Barclays is to close its branch in Sedgefield village. This recent round of closures will deprive every community in my constituency of a bank branch except Newton Aycliffe, which will still have a Halifax, a Barclays and a TSB. It is the biggest town in the constituency, with about 30,000 people living there. The local post office still operates in these communities and offers banking facilities, but it is hardly the place to discuss banking issues such as mortgages or loans. Sedgefield is a rural constituency, with up to 40 towns, villages and hamlets over 150 square miles. The bus network is not what it should be and it is difficult to get around without a car or other means of transport Much banking is now done online, on a mobile app, or on the telephone, but there are still those in our communities who need to be able to walk into their local bank branch because they are not online or do not have access to a telephone or mobile, especially the elderly. I know that the banks that are closing branches in my constituency say that they recognise those concerns. NatWest, for example, has a network of community bankers—I believe the number is 1,000—around the country who will be deployed to reach out to and support vulnerable customers when a branch is closed All the banks have pointed out to me that how people do their banking has changed radically over the past few years. NatWest told me that the number of people using its branch network has fallen by 40% since 2014. In the same period, mobile transactions have increased by 73% and, in the first half of 2017, 1.1 billion mobile and online transactions were carried out by the bank’s customers. Since 2012, in the two NatWest branches in my constituency, 88% of the customers in Ferryhill and 89% of the customers in Newton Aycliffe have banked in other ways. Transactions at the Ferryhill branch have fallen by 30% and at Newton Aycliffe the figure was 34%. The number of customers using both branches has fallen to between 60 and 100 a week, although whenever I speak to customers who use the branches they always say that there are queues and that they are busy. The reality for customers seems to be completely different from the statistics revealed by the branch. It is a similar story with Santander in Newton Aycliffe. Santander says that 91% of customers use other means of banking besides walking into the local branch. Some 45% use other Santander branches and 40% use their mobiles to do online banking I used to live near Sedgefield village, and I can always remember there being a Barclays bank there. I asked how long a branch had been there and was told that there had been a Barclays in that same building in Sedgefield for nearly 100 years. Now, Barclays says that 74% of its customers use other forms of banking. Of 5,000 customers, 22% use the branch exclusively for their banking. Barclays has identified 200 people it considers vulnerable and tells me that it is proactively contacting them to help with their future banking needs. Overall, the number of transactions at the branch has fallen by 17%, whereas in the wider region the fall has been 12% Banks such as Barclays, NatWest and others that are closing branches should report how many vulnerable customers they have been able to retain or how many have gone on to other banking mechanisms and systems, to ensure that they are not financially excluded. If they did that, we would be able to take a snapshot of how many people are becoming financially excluded because of closures.