Phil Knowles, the Liberal Democrat leader of the new coalition running Harborough District Council, is backing the establishment of a banking hub. You can hear him talking about the idea on the Harborough FM website.
I'm pleased he is, because I've not heard any minister mention this loss of high street banks. The Conservative's default response to any political issue is now a shrug.
The banks' case for these closures is that everyone banks online these days and the high street branches see few customers. But I have never seen that HSBC branch empty when I have gone in there.
And when I had to obtain a power of attorney over my mother's financial affairs in her last year, it was a godsend that her bank had a branch in town. It meant I could sit down with someone there and talk through the process.
That branch closed earlier this year,
Someone from HSBC told Harborough FM:
"The decision to close a branch is never easy or taken lightly, especially if we are the last branch in an area, so we’ve invested heavily in our 'post closure' strategy, including providing free tablet devices to selected branch customers who do not already have a device to bank digitally, alongside one-to-one coaching to help them migrate to digital banking."
Yet I cannot recall receiving any communication from them about the closure of their Market Harborough branch.
If this is a more realistic picture of what goes on when a branch of bank closes, it is a worry.
As the Harborough FM story says:
Age UK is warning many older or vulnerable people are struggling with online banking and its research has found four in 10 older people with a bank account in Britain – equivalent to more than four million people – are not managing their money online and could be at risk of financial exclusion.
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