Clydesdale Bank: Scotland

(asked on 26th January 2017) - View Source

Question to the Scotland Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, whether his Department has made representations to the Clydesdale Bank after that Bank's announcement of 18 January 2017 to close 40 branches in Scotland; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
David Mundell Portrait
David Mundell
This question was answered on 2nd February 2017

While decisions on the opening and closing of individual bank branches are taken by the management of each bank on a commercial basis without intervention from Government, the impact on communities must be understood, considered and mitigated where possible.

The UK Government welcomed the industry-wide Access to Banking protocol announced in March 2015. The Protocol sets out a number of steps a bank must take if it is closing a branch, including establishing the impact of a branch closure before it takes place; finding suitable alternative provision; and putting satisfactory alternative measures in place before a branch is closed. Professor Russell Griggs’ recently published his ‘one year on’ review evaluating the operation of the Protocol to date. The Government is pleased to see that, following the publication of the review, the industry is committing to further improvements to protect those affected by closures.

On 24 January, the UK Government was also pleased to see a new agreement between the Post Office and UK banks which means that many more individuals and businesses can now use 11,600 local Post Office branches to access a wider range of banking services. The Government welcomes these on-going efforts to open up banking services so they are more convenient for everyone that uses them.

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