RBS shuts branches... then bans other banks opening up

BAILED- OUT Royal Bank of Scotland has been accused of ruining towns and villages by banning rivals from reopening many of the branches it has closed.

The taxpayer-backed lender has scrapped 695 RBS and NatWest branches in the last five years in a desperate attempt to cut costs and end nearly a decade of losses.

It has left many towns with no banks – blighting their high streets, forcing shopkeepers to travel miles to make deposits, and denying elderly customers a service.

Now the Mail can reveal that when RBS shuts a branch but keeps an outside cash machine there, it includes a clause in the premises’ sale details which forbids another bank or building society from opening in the space.

RBS said that restrictions are applied to one in five closed branches, meaning as many as 139 may have been affected.

Rivals Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds all told the Mail they have no such requirement.

The Mail found details of 21 former RBS and NatWest branches for sale on the internet where a cash machine was left in place.

In every case, a notice made clear that the property was being ‘sold subject to restrictions’ which prohibited certain uses. As well as forbidding sex shops, pubs and gun stores, it also bans ‘businesses involved with money lending’ and ‘banks or building societies’.

Of the 21 bank branches shut, seven were the last bank in town, depriving people of the only place they could go for services.

It means that in rural settlements such as Sedbergh in Cumbria, as well as shutting the final option, RBS made it much harder for anyone else to open.

Few high street buildings are suited to housing a branch, so when a former one moves out it is likely to be the most obvious place for another bank to open.

Ian Millward of advice group Candid Money said: ‘This just looks like spite, with RBS saying they’re going to move away from local communities and then prevent anybody else from stepping in and taking the hole they’ve left.

‘An old NatWest branch is a perfect space for another branch to go in. It just seems deeply unreasonable.’ Although most lenders are cutting back, some are keen to open new branches.

On Tuesday, the Mail told how ten branches a week were shutting across Britain in 2017. An RBS spokesman said: ‘ When we retain an ATM we have to apply criteria so that staff can access and service the ATM safely.’

Almost every struggling business which was put in the hands of the RBS rescue unit was mistreated, a leaked report revealed last night.

The bank’s global restructuring group (GRG) was set up to help firms struggling with debts. But it was accused of deliberately wrecking companies during the financial crisis, to shore up its own ailing balance sheet.

GRG was accused of massive overcharging, imposing unnecessary fees and asset- stripping – claims RBS has always denied.

Now, a leaked study commissioned by the Financial Conduct Authority shows that 92 per cent of viable businesses which ended up in the GRG were hit by ‘inappropriate action’ at the bank.

At its peak, the unit handled 16,000 companies – meaning thousands of entrepreneurs and family owners will have been affected by these mistakes.

Only 10 per cent of businesses which landed in the GRG ever made it out and back into the main part of RBS.

An RBS spokesman said: ‘ We could have done better for some customers in GRG.’

FOR a minuscule fraction of its half-yearly profits of £2.5billion, Lloyds could afford to keep open the only free cash machine in Lynton, north Devon.

But no. To save itself money it would barely notice, the bank has removed its cashpoint, forcing residents and tourists to travel 20 miles to the nearest ATM, thereby crippling local businesses.

Meanwhile, Royal Bank of Scotland has closed 695 branches in five years, leaving many towns with no bank at all. But its social irresponsibility doesn’t stop there.

As the Mail reveals today, the bank makes it a condition of many branch sales that no rival lender can open on the premises – a dog-in-the-manger attitude that sucks the lifeblood from isolated communities.

Don’t you have to pinch yourself to recall that in the City’s hour of need, taxpayers pumped tens of billions into RBS and Lloyds to keep them afloat? The arrogance and ingratitude are truly breath-taking.

As they pocket their seven-figure salaries, while acknowledging no social duty to towns they abandon, how can these banks’ executives look taxpayers in the eye?