Firms hit by bank closures
From: Mike Cherry, Chairman, Federation of Small Businesses.
THE rapid pace of bank branch and cashpoint closures is hurting small businesses all over the UK (The Yorkshire Post, February 12).
Millions of small firms have customers who want to pay using notes and coins. The vast majority of shoppers either use cash frequently or want to see access to it maintained.
Bank branches and cashpoints create a natural draw for high streets and town centres. They give shoppers a reason to visit.
When bank branches and cashpoints are lost, local growth often takes a hit.
Going cashless should represent a genuine choice for small business owners. It shouldn’t be a move forced by lack of access to deposit and withdrawal facilities.
With our cash infrastructure increasingly under attack, it’s time for a regulator to be given explicit responsibility for protecting access to notes and coins.
Otherwise we risk drifting into a cashless environment that we’re simply not ready for yet.
From: John Senior, Skelmanthorpe.
RECENTLY, you reported that Royal Mail’s profits were under pressure. They could easily increase their profits if they dropped some of their remoter rounds in the way that banks close so-called unprofitable branches.
They are not allowed to and must deliver to remote farms for the same price as to inner city addresses.
In like manner, should it not be possible to grant banking licences only to those banks who are willing to maintain a single branch in settlements above a certain size and in groups of settlements above a certain size within a five-mile radius say?
The number of such ‘unprofitable’ branches a particular bank had to maintain would be in proportion to the size of its business in the UK.
This would go some way to repay the people who have suffered from the banks’ profligate behaviour in the first decade of this century.