Cash access advocacy group Payment Choice Alliance took to social media this week to once again decry what it claims is the “completely and utterly inadequate” Treasury target for the net total of Banking Hubs to be made available to UK consumers nationwide in the coming years. 

According to Link, each Banking Hub is designed to be a “shared banking space, similar to a traditional bank branch, but available to everyone.”

At present, just over 100 operate throughout small towns dotted all over the UK. Managed by Post Office employees, the hubs provide counter service for customers of any bank to withdraw and deposit cash, as well as make bill payments and carry out regular banking transactions.

HM Treasury currently aims to have 350 Banking Hubs up and running nationwide by 2029. 

But Payment Choice Alliance has pointed to the nation’s population distribution: with over 1,200 communities sized between 5,000 and 35,000 people, nearly all of which lack any means of free 24/7 cash access.

“The Payment Choice Alliance has made clear for a very long time that a minimum of 1200 Banking Hubs are required,” the group wrote on LinkedIn this week. “Let’s hope no further changes are needed at HM Treasury before they get the message.” 

Nor the local councils either. 

Whilst so much effort is being afforded in places such as Barnet, Brent and Peterborough to drive gambling operations off their high streets, they might take a moment to consider what the high street will look like without them. There will certainly be no banks, they have been systematically abandoning the high street with branch closures since before Covid, and the paltry replacement of banking hubs where  a number of banks will get together and put some services up on just 350 streets by the end of this decade is definitely the future salvation of the high street. 

It seems one sector’s cluster, is another council’s cluster f…