Closure of High Street Services: Rural Areas

James Naish Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jamie Stone]

Indeed. The hon. Member makes a sound point. My wife hails from Northern Ireland, and I know that the problems there are very similar to those in Monmouth, the highlands of Scotland or wherever.

Recently, my splendid team and I had the pleasure of visiting the Acton banking hub. We were mightily impressed by its operation and commitment to making cash accessible to the community. The good news, turning to the point made by the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), is that we are going to get a banking hub opened in Wick in my constituency this summer. That will be most welcome. The organisation in charge met the local people last week and the reception was very warm indeed. There is a sense of relief that banking hubs are at long last being rolled out, but the point about the speed of rolling them out is well made.

[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

A lot of people, when selecting their bank, go to the local town and choose the bank that their parents used; but with the volume of closures taking place we might be getting to the point where banks lose business, as we stop going to the NatWests and the Lloyds, the high street banks of yesteryear, and people start going to online banks. Does the hon. Member agree with me that the banks’ approach is counterintuitive?

[Jamie Stone]

That point is exceptionally well made. From little acorns, mighty oaks grow, and in the old days a good bank manager would specialise in spotting a potential business that was going to grow, which in turn benefited the bank. We all know of examples over the last 30 or 40 years where that happened.

Banking hubs are not a universal solution, however. In my constituency, the last bank branch in the county of Sutherland, Bank of Scotland in Golspie, is about to close. When it was looked at for a banking hub, it was deemed too small. There is not going to be a banking hub because it did not fit the stats. That means that the whole county of Sutherland—a vast county in the UK—will not have one single bank branch. As I say, access to cash is not the paramount function of banking services; cash access is just the tip of the iceberg in solving the problem of closed branches. It is the other functions I mention, such as face-to-face services, that provide the local community with an invaluable service. The economic impact of these closures cannot be overstated.

High streets are more than just retail hubs; they are engines of the local economy. Returning to my constituency, in the two large towns of Wick and Thurso, which are the largest population centres, high street businesses provide jobs. My two daughters have worked in shops in my hometown of Tain—one in a chemist, the other in a fruit and vegetable shop. The high street attracts visitors who contribute to the local economy—one thinks of Monmouth in that respect.

When these services disappear, so the jobs go. The threat of having to move south when the tourists leave at the end of the tourist season affects the highlands. I know of people who had a summer job; when the tourists go, away they go too, and they may not come back again. That casts that dark old shadow of highland and island depopulation, which the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) will know well. It haunts all of us in the more remote areas of Scotland.

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[Jamie Stone]

I absolutely agree with that point. In my area of the highlands, employees sometimes have to travel long distances with a large amount of money to deposit it, and I wonder about their safety. For somebody of evil intent, it would be quite easy to target them as they make the bus journey or whatever.

The Visa survey revealed that four in 10 people agree that small businesses local to them make the area a nicer place to live in, and 40% of local business owners said that customer interaction has a positive impact on their overall job satisfaction. My two daughters loved working in the chemist and the fruit and vegetable shop, because it meant happy chat when they saw their friends.

There is a deep-rooted appreciation in our communities for such businesses, which greatly contribute to the value of the local area. That value is felt by those who work for the local businesses and, as a result of feeling appreciated, they feel a sense of higher job satisfaction. Those two phenomena cannot be separated.

In Scotland, 87% of independent retailers take part in some form of community engagement, so we cannot underestimate how important sustaining businesses is to all aspects of community life—[Interruption.] I am aware of the time, and I shall finish my speech very shortly. For example, the Tain Gala is wonderful thing that is much loved by the community, but 20 years ago the businesses would each chip in. As there are fewer businesses on the high street, it is much harder to run the Tain Gala. I am sure the same is true of Stornoway and other towns across the length and breadth of the UK.

Here in Westminster, we are calling for economic investment in our communities to boost growth. I am very grateful to the previous Government for helping to establish the Inverness and Cromarty Firth green freeport, but if we do not have the local infrastructure to support it —the banks and shops—it will be much harder. Without our high street, without our banks, post offices, hairdressers and chemists, it is harder to support the local population.

[James Naish]

I want to clarify the point about empowering local councils to make a difference. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to remove the shackles from the funding packages that the previous Government give local authorities and empower local decision makers to make decisions in the interests of those locations?

[Jamie Stone]

I hope Treasury Ministers take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention into consideration.

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[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall today. I am proud to represent the constituency of Rushcliffe, which includes large swathes of rural Nottinghamshire. From Cotgrave to East Leake, rural communities across my constituency are facing ongoing challenges, as the services that many residents rely on are slowly disappearing. Banks, post offices, pharmacies and even pubs, once the lifeblood of villages and towns, are shutting their doors, leaving many residents increasingly isolated and without the essential services they need.

For me, and I think many hon. Members present, this issue is not just about convenience. As has been described, it is about social cohesion, economic sustainability and the fundamental right of rural residents to access the same level of services as their urban counterparts. If we are to ensure that our rural communities are thriving rather than declining, we must take action to address the concerning trends that we have witnessed over the past decade.

The statistics paint a worrying picture. Between 2015 and 2023, more than 6,000 bank branches closed across the UK, with rural areas hit hardest. We have talked about post offices, which often serve as a replacement for lost banking services, but they are also under immense pressure: in 2000, the UK had more than 17,500 post offices; today, that number has fallen to 11,500.

Also key are pharmacies, which I do not believe have been mentioned yet. They too are vanishing from our communities. The National Pharmacy Association warns that closures are accelerating, leaving many rural residents, especially elderly and disabled individuals, without easy access to prescriptions and essential healthcare advice.

[Ben Maguire]

Bodmin, in my rural constituency of North Cornwall, has lost almost all its pharmacies; it has one on the high street. The Cornwall health and wellbeing board has stipulated that no two pharmacies can be within 1 mile of each other, meaning that any future pharmacies will have to be at least 1 mile out of town. Does the hon. Member agree that that rule is not helpful to our high streets, and certainly not helpful to our residents in rural areas, who struggle to get to pharmacies?

[James Naish]

I absolutely agree. I am strong supporter of the Pharmacy First initiative, and it is essential that as a Government we look at ways to expand that scheme, so that more and more people use their pharmacies and the pharmacies are therefore more sustainable.

On average, 29 pubs close every week in the UK, and in many cases there is no alternative place for our communities to gather. We need urgent action to reverse this decline, and in my view Government support is critical.

I welcome initiatives around banking hubs, but we also need to press our banks harder to ensure that they fulfil their moral obligations to our communities. I welcome the high street auction initiatives, which allow vacant properties to be brought back into use. It is vital that we unshackle funding to empower local councils and decision makers to support their areas. I also encourage the Government to accelerate business rates reform, which I know we are committed to.

We must ensure that rural communities have the same access to essential services as urban centres. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how we can all work together to safeguard vital community assets and keep our rural high streets alive.

[Several hon. Members rose—]