Bank closures ‘the last nail in
Newcastle Emlyn is the latest Welsh town to lose all of its banks. finds out what it means to people and businesses...
IT’S happening in towns and cities across Wales – a familiar sign appears in the window of the local bank saying it’ll be closing and listing two or three other branches you can visit instead.
The latest town to join the growing list of places left without a single bank is Newcastle Emlyn.
Newcastle Emlyn is nestled right on the border of Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion and the drive to the town is as pretty as the town itself.
It’s 16 miles from Carmarthen and, in rural Welsh style, the trip from there takes about 30 minutes – give or take a tractor or two.
Newcastle Emlyn has a high street with pubs, gift shops, clothes shops, and cafes. Until fours years ago the same street had four banks – HSBC, NatWest, Lloyds and Barclays – but then the closures started.
With the latest wave of closures, though, some of the banks customers were directed to are now also being closed.
For example, when Barclays announced in 2017 it would no longer have a branch in Llandysul, the paperwork produced for customers said Newcastle Emlyn was the nearest alternative. That has now gone.
HSBC was first to go after the banking giant announced in July 2015 it would close its doors. A month later NatWest said its branch would also be closing.
Then the double blow that both Lloyds and Barclays would also close came last year. Barclays closed in November with Lloyds set to close at the end of January.
Barclays said the number of transactions at the branch has gone down in the previous 24 months and only 47 customers use the branch exclusively.
It was a similar message from Lloyds Bank which said 77% fewer customers use the Newcastle Emlyn branch than a typical Lloyds branch.
Aside from the job losses and the four buildings that will lay empty, people in Newcastle Emlyn fear their closures will kill their town.
Rhian Davies has run the craft shop, Y Wiber, for 17 years.
We bump into her in the post office and she invites us into her colourful shop which is packed with everything from paints to felt, cards, and gifts.
Her business banking is with HSBC and despite them no longer being in the town she doesn’t want to leave them – not due to loyalty but just the time the process takes.
“I don’t want to change my bank because it’s a huge inconvenience when you’re a small business,” she says.
With utmost certainty she said she believes the loss of the remaining banks will be the “last nail in the coffin for our town”.
“It was quiet before and it’s noticeably so now. Friday and Saturday used to be bustling – Thursday too because it was market day.
“Now we might as well be doing half days,” she says.
While we’re talking to Rhian one of her customers, Colleen Evans, overhears and tells us her story.
Halifax customer Colleen is disabled and lives three-and-a-half miles from Newcastle Emlyn, and sure enough, has to do her banking in Carmarthen. Transport links are a source of concern across rural communities especially to the elderly or disabled.
To get to her bank she has to drive, or get a lift into Newcastle Emlyn, and then take a bus trip which lasts up to two hours to Carmarthen. A simple trip to the bank, therefore, is a day-long undertaking.
“Going there I have to use two sticks and my husband is not very keen on it,” she says. “On a day like this it’s not too bad because the weather is good and everything else. But when it’s raining I really get uptight.”
Figures from the labour market statistics site Nomis show there were a total of 445 banks in Wales in 2018, down from 720 branches in 2010 when modern records began – a reduction of 38%.
Martin Paul is 48. He’s just used the Barclays cashpoint when I ask if he’s got two minutes for a chat.
In a lot of towns most people you stop at random wouldn’t necessarily know the name of their AM and people would struggle to tell you what they were campaigning about.
But in Newcastle Emlyn almost everyone acknowledges an early day motion being put forward by Ben Lake, the Plaid MP, to try to force banks to set up a shared service in towns where all the banks have been closed.
“There should be a regulation for there to be at least one bank in a town – that’s what Ben Lake wants to do” says Martin.
In a bid to get Commons backing for his proposal, Mr Lake has told the Commons: “The current trend of branch closures has a devastating impact on individuals, businesses, and communities.”
He wants to see shared facilities in areas like Ceredigion.
The 2018 Local Shop Report, created by the Association of Convenience Stores, showed cash is an essential method of payment for customers in convenience stores with