Caithness Sees Banking Access Shrink Again With TSB Decision

27th March 2019

THE decision by TSB to reduce opening hours at its branches in Thurso and Wick from mid-July means less choice of when to do bank transactions locally in person. The bank says fewer people using branches means they need to move with the times and look more to their digital operations.

The bank confirmed it is cutting the days the Wick branch opens from five to three. Its Thurso branch will be cut from five to four days.

Thurso TSB will be open on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays while the Wick branch will be open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Royal Bank in Wick has and the Clydesdale in Thurso closed their doors.

Royal Bank Wick Closed 17 May 2018

Clydesdale Bank Thurso closed 23 May 2017

Getting Cash is also getting harder.

250 free-to-use cash machines disappear every month. A total of nearly 3,000 cashpoints were lost in the second half of last year.

Just over 1,500 were free-to-use ATMs and 102 were 'protected' machines. ATMs closures add to bank branches also closing at an ‘alarming rate', with 3,300 UK branches having closed their doors since 2015.

A total of nearly 3,000 cashpoints were lost in the second half of last year, with more than half of them, or just over 1,500, being free-to-use ATMs, according to research by consumer group Which?.

Link, the country's largest operator of cash machines, said it will hike the fees it pays to operators of ATMs in a bid to stop more closures.

Link said a new super premium will be paid by banks to ATM operators in some places where cash machines are situated in remote and less well-off parts of the country.

ATM operators will receive enhanced premiums of up to £2.75 each time someone withdraws cash from an eligible machine under the changes.

Around 1,000 cash machines will initially be eligible and the enhanced premiums will vary in size depending on how well a particular ATM is used.

Currently, Link pays operators of free-to-use cash machines a 30p subsidy for every withdrawal made, so that could go up as much as nine-fold in some cases.

More bank branch closure look likely to happen as more and more online spending takes place rather than on the high street.

Digital cash via cards is also increasing year on year.

PHOTO

TSB in Wick - Photographer Bill Fernie