Black horse has gone galloping from town

YOU might have heard me yelling at my TV screen last week if you lived in Thatcham.

I had just viewed a Lloyds Bank advert telling me their black horse was always going to be at my side.

Not in Thatcham he isn’t. We residents of Thatcham have seen the closure of our last bank. We are left with a cashpoint supplied by the main Co-op store, and the Post Office for banking transactions.

There are other cash points at the smaller Co-op in Station Road and at the petrol station, both of which are regularly unable to provide a paper receipt.

I feel aggrieved, let down and angry with the banks – all of them.

Recently two local charities I am involved with have had their costfree accounts closed by different banks.

They have been forced to try to find a bank or building society which can handle their very small and infrequent transactions without levying charges which would eat into their meagre cash holdings.

Yes, of course banks are businesses, but didn’t they offer a service to their communities not that long ago?

And we are all being forced online to bank anyway, aren’t we?

Never mind the residents who are not on the internet, usually elderly, and certainly wouldn’t know a smart phone if they saw one.

I know an organisation where roughly 10 per cent of their members are not connected to the web.

To conclude, I went into the main Thatcham Post Office on a Saturday afternoon and chatting to the counter clerk asked if she had noticed an uplift in banking transactions since the closure of the banks.

She said she had, and expected more now Lloyds was to close its doors, however she had just had to close the office for an hour to have lunch.

The Post Office have not increased staffing levels to account for more business coming their way and the clerk was manning the office on her own.

So, if you hear abuse being hurled at adverts on a Thatcham TV it is probably me yelling at the black horse.

STEPHANIE STEEVENSON Park Lane

Thatcham