MP Jamie Stone calls for 'banking hubs' in Highlands
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North MP Jamie Stone is urging banks to pool resources and open "banking hubs" in the Highlands following a series of branch closures.
Writing to the Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale, Royal Bank of Scotland and TSB, Mr Stone called on them to invest in combined community banking facilities to address the banking crisis now facing the region.
At a recent meeting attended by Mr Stone, John Glen, the economic secretary to the Treasury, told MPs that the one-stop business banking hubs were now the subject of several pilot schemes in large English conurbations.
Mr Stone, the Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, is calling for a similar scheme to be launched in Sutherland and other parts of the Highlands to provide shared personal banking facilities.
It was announced earlier this month that the Clydesdale branch in Brora will be shutting later in the year. That will leave just one bank branch remaining in Sutherland – the Bank of Scotland in Golspie.
Since 2015 the Bank of Scotland has closed its branches in Dornoch, Lairg, Helmsdale and Bonar Bridge and the Royal Bank has shut its branches in Tongue and Lochinver.
Clydesdale customers at the Brora branch will be notified 12 weeks before its closure and informed of their nearest branches – the nearest are an hour’s journey away at either Dingwall or Wick.
“My constituents shouldn’t have to travel over a hundred miles just to access banking services,” Mr Stone said this week. “I’m sick and tired of this treatment of people living in rural areas and it’s about time bank bosses realised one-size-fits-all solutions don’t cut it in vast, rural areas.
“Patchy internet access and closing Post Office branches mean that the ‘alternatives’ suggested by banks are simply not available.
“Pilots are in place down south and they are now acutely needed in Sutherland and the Highlands more widely – so banks must put these in place where we now desperately need them.
“If banks were to work together they could provide a joint branch in every community over a certain size, giving customers face-to-face advice and the ability to accept cash and cheques, regardless of which bank you are actually with. And that is what I’m asking the banks to do.”
