The Last Bank In Town

There are a couple of Facebook groups that I belong to that are devoted to the history of my hometown, Romford, and apart from the fascinating pictures of the town over the last hundred and fifty years or so, there are regular comments about two aspects of life in the town that exercise, and sometimes even anger people. Firstly, is Romford in Essex or London? Well, until 1965, it was in Essex, but following the 1963 London Government Act, it was incorporated - with neighbouring Hornchurch - into the newly formed London Borough of Havering. A lot of people find this difficult to accept - especially since Romford is, to many people, an archetypal Essex town - but administratively it is in London, end of story.

The second subject that members of these Facebook groups frequently discuss is the waning of Romford Market, which opened as a sheep market in 1247.[1] These days it no longer trades in livestock and the number of stalls selling fish, meat, fruit and vegetables, clothes, toys and a whole range of other goods has sadly fallen away over the years. The reasons for the market's decline are many; competition from pound shops, discount supermarkets, and the wider availability of cheap clothing from stores like Primark. The traditional market users have got older, stopped going or moved away and the preference that many people have these days for one-stop, supermarket shopping makes them less likely to frequent the market on a regular basis. Almost perversely, those who most lament the decline seem to be those who use it the least - or not at all.

Romford Market, 1969. Photo: Romford Recorder

Thirty-five years or more ago, when I worked at Midland Bank's branch in the Market Place (now HSBC Bank), Wednesdays and Fridays -which along with Saturdays are market days - would be busy with traders paying in cash and changing notes for coins or vice versa. We had at least three, often four or more, cashiers working hard to serve the ceaseless stream of customers, not just stall holders, but publicans, shopkeepers, and the general public, all paying money in, or cashing cheques. Last Friday I popped into the branch to pay in some loose change that I had accumulated and bagged up, and was struck - as I am each time I go in there - by the changes that have been made to the banking hall and cashier's counter. The six counter positions that dominated the banking hall when I worked there are no more; just two positions now, tucked away in the far corner almost as an afterthought. And instead of the bustle of market traders and publicans, shopkeepers and office clerks queuing at each position, a single queue comprising just a handful of people, but as I stood there, with just three or four people in front of me, I was grateful for the fact that the banking hall was not thronged with customers because each transaction seemed to take an eternity.

HSBC Romford on a non-market day.

In the days when I was a bank cashier the transaction that I conducted last Friday would have taken less than a minute. Weigh the coin, tick off the amounts on the paying in slip, record the transaction on the old Lamson Paragon machine, stamp the slip and counterfoil, tear out the slip and return to the book to the customer: sixty seconds or less. Now, I watched the cashier weigh the coin, tick the amounts off on the paying in slip and then spend what seemed an absolute age tapping away at the keyboard in front of her, and then stamp my paying in book and return it to me, sans credit.

A Lamson Paragon machine, which was filled with special recording sheets and carbon paper to log cash transactions.

Like almost everything else in our lives, banking is almost unrecognisable compared to how it was in 1980, when I sat at the counter in Midland Bank, Romford. Then we had a team of back office staff processing the credits and the cheques we accepted from customers; now cashiers do so much more with each transaction and each one takes so much longer. In 1980 we had an Autobank dispensing various amounts of cash to customers, now there are not just cash dispensers, but machines to accept deposits of cash or cheques. And with online banking the need for customers to deal face-to-face with anyone in the bank has reduced and will, no doubt fall still further in the future, even removing the need to go to the bank to pay in a cheque.

Despite the popularity of online payment methods like Faster Payments, Paym, and PayPal, we still write over 470 million cheques a year in the UK, and in these days of fast, reliable, electronic payment methods, it still takes three days to clear a cheque and even after six days, that cheque could still be returned unpaid (bounce). Customers have complained about the perceived delay in cheques clearing for many a year, but that is all going to change this coming November when a one-day clearing cycle is introduced[2]. This will be possible since banks will exchange images of cheques presented to them rather than the physical instruments themselves, and that will also enable customers to deposit cheques by scanning them on their mobile phones and uploading them through their banking app.

The programme of branch closures that all of the major banks have embarked upon in recent years shows no sign of abating and our continued adoption of new technology such as banking apps is as significant a factor as any. If you embrace technology to the extent that you visit your bank only once or twice a year, you can scarcely be surprised if it closes. In my local area, HSBC closed their Upminster branch and Lloyds are soon to follow suit. In Collier Row, the only two banks who have a presence - National Westminster and Lloyds - will close their doors for the last time in the coming months. Lloyds say that their Collier Row branch has just 46 regular weekly personal and business customers - their Upminster branch has just 37 - while residents of Collier Row are also set to lose their Post Office: thirty-six other Crown Post Offices are also set to close nationwide. Once, most towns had their full complement of banks, these days if you can find one to walk into, the chances are it is the last bank in town.

A lot of people are understandably upset and angry when their local bank, building society or Post Office closes, but when footfall declines to the extent that it has at the Lloyds Bank branches where, on average, less than ten regular customers per day visit them, keeping them open makes no economic sense. The case for closing Post Offices is somewhat different. In the UK there are 11,500 Post Offices;  three hundred are Crown Post Offices, owned by the government, while the remainder are franchised. The Collier Row office is one of thirty-seven Crown offices that are being closed and will likely be replaced by a franchise. In 2016 Crown Post Offices lost £24million, and while most people see post offices as a public service whose availability ought not to be driven by profit, times have changed and like almost everything else, the balance sheet has the ultimate say.

The way we shop and the way we bank have changed immeasurably in recent years, so while we may lament the decline of the local market and the closure of our bank branches, the simple fact is that unless we use them - and increasingly we are not - we are going to lose them.

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[1] http://www.romford-market.co.uk/

[2] http://news.sky.com/story/new-system-will-mean-cheques-cleared-in-one-working-day-10810634