Bank Closures and Banking Hubs

Helen Morgan Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker; I was so absorbed by the debate that I did not hear you call my name. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) on securing this debate, which is important.

In my constituency of North Shropshire, there are five market towns, but only one will have a commercial banking branch left after the closure of the NatWest in Market Drayton this year. We find ourselves in a situation of managed decline for rural constituents, with essential services slowly removed bit by bit every year.

Just two months ago, I attended the opening of the Whitchurch banking hub, which is providing a vital service to a town of around 10,000 people that had lost its final bank branch. While that is great news for Whitchurch and the best alternative to a network of commercial banks, we must consider now those market towns that do not meet the criteria set by Link. For example, the lovely, historic, but quite small town of Ellesmere in North Shropshire has a population of around 5,000 people and 90 commercial units. It is a hub for a large rural area and there is no bank and no prospect of getting one, according to Link, because it does not meet the criteria.

Ellesmere still has a post office, which is relied upon by local businesses for cash services. Having been the financial controller of a business in an area served only by a post office, I can tell the House that people need to do more than simply deposit and withdraw cash. Although I was a big fan of Prees post office and village store, if I needed to change the signatory on a bank account or set up a new one, it was a logistical nightmare; if I did not want to post valuable and sensitive documents, it required a half-day trip to a town with a physical branch.

For someone in Ellesmere, the nearest town is Oswestry. To visit an actual bank in person is a 45-minute round trip on public transport. Someone living in the surrounding villages is in a difficult situation. Those residents might also have used their post office at some point, but now those post offices are being systematically closed down. In my constituency, from Knockin to Hadnall and from Weston Rhyn to Shawbury, outreach post offices have been closed in one fell swoop with a couple of weeks’ notice. A Post Office representative sounded surprised recently when they told me that outreach services only available for one hour a week were not well used. It seemed not to have occurred to them that if the post office is only available for a single hour, that might not be terribly convenient.

I have little time left, so I will just say that for places with poor digital access, where many people cannot access online banking, it is essential that we review the criteria that Link uses to assess the need for a banking hub. A medieval market town that has been serving the centre of its community for hundreds and hundreds of years is on its knees because there is no access to banking. It is essential that we get those services back into high streets to revitalise towns such as Ellesmere and Wem as soon as possible.