MSP’s petition on bank axe

Residents hoping to outline public dismay at the Royal Bank of Scotland’s plan to shut a branch in a rural Perthshire village have been given the chance to sign a protest document.

Ochil and South Perthshire MSP Luke Graham has set up a petition titled ‘Stop the RBS and Bank of Scotland Closures’.

He has already garnered signatures from residents in Kinross – which is also set to lose its RBS branch – and will be in Comrie’s St Kessog’s Square at 2.30pm on Saturday with the document.

During a recent debate in Westminster, Conservative politician Mr Graham said: “We’re facing a situation where the alternative of going to the Post Office is not practical.

“It [his constituency] is already an area with poor broadband, inadequate infrastructure, while the local Post Office subbranch may be located in a newsagent.

“It’s pathetic customer service from the Royal Bank of Scotland, and it’s not acceptable.”

The MP also joined with his Scottish Conservative and Unionist parliamentary colleagues in writing a letter to Treasury Ministers opposing the proposed closures, as well as meeting RBS representatives.

Meanwhile, Perthshire South and Kinross-shire SNP MSP Roseanna Cunningham has written a joint letter, alongside Perth and North Perthshire MP Pete Wishart, to Jane Howard, managing director of personal banking at the RBS, expressing disappointment at the company’s refusal to reconsider its plans to shut five branches in Perth and Kinross.

Ms Cunningham said: “The initial response we received from RBS was not encouraging, claiming that they had considered the decision carefully and would not be revisiting it.

“Infuriatingly, however, the reply did not refer to any of the specific questions raised and merely listed a reiteration of the criteria they claimed to have applied with no indication as to how the specific branches ‘scored’ against those criteria.

“The few facts supplied were Scotland-wide statistics such as the claim that branch usage has fallen by 44 per cent as a whole since 2012.

“We had raised a number of questions regarding the demographic information on which the decisions were based.”