Earlier this week, I wrote a column for the East Anglian Daily Times about the importance of retaining rural services and how I'm fighting in Parliament to save them:
"Access to banking and the post office is important for a thriving and vibrant rural economy. That is why I have been working to combat closures of banks and a reduction in the post office service. Last week, I had a triple whammy at trying to hold the banks to account on these closures locally and right across the country. First, thank you to the 1,762 people who signed my petition regarding the closure of Barclays Bank in Leiston. It particularly asks for the Financial Conduct Authority (the FCA) to publish their assessment of the justification of the closure. That follows the government changing legislation last year giving the FCA the power to investigate the closures. Earlier that day, through my membership of the Treasury Select Committee, I was able to interrogate the UK chief executives of Barclays, Lloyds, Santander and Nat West. Only Santander committed to no further closures in the next twelve months. I pressed them on the criteria they used to decide on branch closures but they were not totally forthcoming.
One route to try and keep banking going is through a banking hub. Now, every application for a hub in Suffolk Coastal has been turned down – in Halesworth, Southwold and Leiston. This surprised me that every application had been rejected so I went up early to London last week to join a roundtable at the Treasury with the Minister and representatives of the banks, including LINK and Cash UK. LINK is the organisation that undertakes the assessment for hubs. For the first time, LINK shared their assessment and it came to light that they only consider the impact of a bank or cashpoint closure on a town plus a 1km circumference. I was astounded by this as that is not how the rural economy with the market town works. No consideration was given to villages slightly further afield. I will keep working with the Economic Secretary to the Treasury on this and I hope to get the Leiston banking hub application reconsidered before the Barclays bank branch closes.
With so many bank branch closures, the default is to turn to the Post Office. We actually have quite a lot of post offices in Suffolk Coastal and there is a national pledge on a 3-mile access to a post office branch or an outreach service. Over the years, some of our branches became outreach services – where one postmaster takes on multiple branches and can provide a basic service, often in a village hall or similar. A longstanding postmaster is due to retire and had started organising for a successor to take on his post office and the existing outreach service. However, the Post Office unilaterally took the decision to save money, reduce services with fewer hours of a mobile van service and to completely stop the outreach service in Kelsale. The government already subsidises rural post offices to the tune of £50m of taxpayer funding per year. Despite the relatively close distance between Kelsale and Saxmundham, many residents use the Kelsale service and it will be much more difficult for them to access services in Saxmundham than the Post Office realise. I am grateful to the Post Office Minister, who I met recently for agreeing to take this up directly. So far, I have been disappointed by the response of the Post Office though I will keep at it – affecting people from Kelsale right up the A12 including Wangford, Wrentham and Yoxford."
