Anthony’s story shows why axeing passbooks is so wrong

I TRUST Lloyds Banking Group is prepared for a backlash from customers over its discontinuation of more than three million savings passbooks – a story my colleague Patrick Tooher broke seven days ago.

Although many banks and building societies have already done away with these books, they still remain popular among savers who prefer to use a branch rather than go online.

They are particularly liked by the elderly who are comforted by the fact that the book provides them with hard evidence of how much they have in their accounts.

The withdrawal of most Lloyds’ passbooks will take place between October and the end of the year. But some are already being deactivated as part of a ‘soft launch’, causing consternation in the process. Passbooks are disappearing across all the company’s high street savings brands – Halifax and Bank of Scotland as well as Lloyds.

A few days ago, I spoke to John Oddy about his son’s experience of being told he could no longer use his Halifax passbook at the branch in Birkenhead, Merseyside.

ANTHONY Oddy, now in his early 50s, has Asperger’s Syndrome. He resides in supported living housing, but leads quite an independent life doing his own cooking and cleaning. Yet he is dependent upon cash, using it to pay his big bills (rent, heating and food). It means a weekly visit to his Halifax branch to withdraw money.

‘The staff know and look after him,’ John says. ‘Anthony likes the passbook because it tells him from week to week how much money he has in his account.’ Anthony, his father says, has never embraced the internet.

Recently, Anthony arrived at his branch to withdraw his usual amount of cash, only to be told the passbook was no longer valid. He left without the cash he needed to pay his bills, resulting in John lending him money when they met the next day.

Whether Anthony was told by the branch that he could still take cash from his account without using the passbook is in dispute – Halifax, in a letter to John, says he could; Anthony begs to differ. But what is indisputable is that Anthony didn’t receive any prior notification about his passbook’s deactivation – a point the manager confirmed to John when he visited the Birkenhead branch to seek an explanation as to what had happened.

Internal bank documents seen by The Mail on Sunday indicate that customers should be given two months’ notice of the change.

John, 84, complained to Halifax about his son’s account being changed from passbook to card based. Although his complaint was rejected, he received £20 in compensation for the time he had consumed and travel costs he had incurred trying to find out why his son’s passbook had been scrapped.

Rather insensitively, Halifax’s letter referred to Anthony’s branch being in Maidstone, Kent, rather than Birkenhead – branches 263 miles apart.

Anthony has now been given a card he can use at his branch to withdraw cash. So, he is happy although there is no guarantee that the Birkenhead branch will be around forever. One of the main objectives behind Lloyds’ removal of passbooks is to reduce branch usage so that it can ‘streamline’ its network.

As for John, a regular churchgoer, he is perturbed by the gradual depersonalisation of banking, resulting in branch closures and more automated services.

‘Human kindness was once something you could expect to get from a bank,’ he says. ‘But in closing branches and forcing us to bank online, it’s in short supply. Now, some of my fellow churchgoers have to get a taxi if they want to visit a branch of the bank they have an account with. Is that progress?’ Of course, it isn’t.

If you have had a bad experience as a result of having your passbook removed, do let me know. Email jeff.prestridge@mailonsunday. co.uk – or write to me at: The Mail on Sunday, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB.