The Mail on Sunday

100th free ATM lands at home of Chinook

-

CASH machine network Link has installed the 100th free-to-use ATM at RAF Odiham in Hampshire as part of a scheme designed to give communitie­s access to cash.

RAF Odiham, home to 2,000 personnel and their families, is a front-line support helicopter base – and home to the Chinook.

Yet it lost its only free-to-use cash machine just before lockdown in March last year, meaning personnel had to travel at least three miles to be able to withdraw cash to spend locally. A new ATM on the base has now been installed by Sainsbury’s Bank.

Launched in 2019, Link’s ‘community requests scheme’ permits individual­s to ask Link to assess their community’s case for a free-to-use cash machine.

If accepted, Link will then draw on the £10million of annual funding it has secured from the banking industry to install one.

Apart from RAF Odiham, Link has paved the way for free-to-use cash machines to be installed at military camps in Lulworth Cove (Dorset), Kinloss Barracks (Moray) and Catterick Garrison (North Yorkshire).

On Friday, John Howells, Link chief executive, said: ‘We will continue to visit locations right across the UK to install ATMs where they are needed.’

Cash machines introduced under this scheme have had a transforma­tive impact on communitie­s.

Anthony Lavelle, a councillor on Liverpool City Council, says a free-to-use ATM installed in Croxteth a year ago has had a ‘positive impact’ on the local community.

‘Croxteth is a cash-dependent community,’ he says. ‘No one should have to pay £2 every time they want to withdraw cash from an ATM.

‘My view is that no cash machine should charge users to access their own cash.’

Details of Link’s community requests scheme can be found at link.co.uk/consumers/community-request-scheme

 ?? ?? BASE: RAF Odiham houses the Chinook
BASE: RAF Odiham houses the Chinook

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom