Santander Closures and Local Communities

Debate between Matt Rodda and Paul Scully

Thursday 14th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. We have talked about how moving Crown post offices into WHSmith branches across the country will limit their structure, because they have some big buildings at the moment. The massive floor space of the one in Sutton is well used, so I am not sure how it will cope if it is restricted at the back of somewhere. It might be a regressive move. There is a limit to how much the Government can direct the Post Office and banks, but they must have a significant influence. They should treat the issue holistically as they look at the future of the high street in general.

We have talked about the access to banking standard. At least Santander now has to go through the process of mitigating the results and looking at who the most vulnerable people are—I hope it would want to do that anyway. The people using bank branches these days tend to be older people, who do not necessarily have access to technology or are not as good at using technology as others, and retailers, especially the independent retailers that I was talking about that are still cash-heavy and need to bank their cash.

For the two branches that are closing in my constituency, the alternatives to Cheam are 1.3 miles and 3.3 miles away, and the alternatives to Worcester Park are 1.8 miles and 3 miles away. For a small business that wants to pay cash in at the end of the day, if there is no post office near enough, that is some distance to go with what might be quite a lot of cash, which is not very secure.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I support the hon. Gentleman’s point about the distance for small businesses. We have that issue in my constituency with the post office closure, which relates to the bank closures. There is a village a mile away from Reading town centre, a separate entity, where three banks and a post office have closed. That is a considerable amount of travelling time for a small business trying to bank cash. We have lost other banks in locations near Reading University and we have lost further facilities in other areas too.

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the need to look holistically at the whole parade of shops, the needs of vulnerable local people, particularly the elderly, and the needs of local small businesses. I urge him to raise with his hon. Friends in Government the possibility of an area-based approach, whereby those different needs are taken into account as part of banking or post office regulation.

[Paul Scully]

In Reading, as in Sutton, the difference in mileage is relatively small, but congestion and extra traffic mean that it represents significant travel time. We cannot compete with the 15 miles that people have to travel in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Angus.

I will make a final point and then let other hon. Members speak. When banks decide to close, we have to make sure that there is still access to a cashpoint network, so people who rely on cash—although that is dying down a bit—have access to it. When I was a local councillor in the neighbouring constituency of Carshalton, I spoke to a baker who had been badly affected when Barclays and its cashpoint closed there. That village relied on its independent shops, but after the cashpoint closed, people tended to turn left, towards the larger supermarkets, rather than right, where the smaller independent shops are. Previously, people had walked past the independent shops to get their cash and would spend money in the bakers and the other smaller shops on their way to do their main shop. Branch closures have a detrimental effect and we need to look at the issue holistically to make sure that we have a thriving, albeit changing, high street.