Bank closures have residents and firms worried

Residents and businesses in several towns say they are worried by string of bank closures with one shop owner warning it could have a knock-on effect on the high street.

Lloyds Bank recently announced its Leominster, Kidderminster and Bromsgrove branches were to close later this year as part of its plan to shut 136 sites.

The firm said the decision to shut the branches was due to customers shifting away from banking in person to using mobile services.

Grocer Mark Parry said he worried the closures could be the death of cash: "I think you need to keep cash alive. Customers like the cash, they use cash, we take cash."

Leominster is due to get a banking hub, a shared space used by different banks which offers basic personal and business banking services.

Mr Parry, from Parry's Fruit and Veg, uses Lloyds for business banking and said he would have to use a post office or bank hub to deposit money from his business due to the closures.

"It's a massive shame. Because we put the cash in there obviously, every week we cash there," he said of the branch in Corn Square.

Janet Griffiths, who has banked with Lloyds for 50 years, spoke of how the closure would affect her.

"I don't do online banking, I don't like it, I don't trust it," she said.

In Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, which has lost four banks in the last three years, the Halifax branch in the town is also set to close in May.

The town's MP, Bradley Thomas, recently started a petition calling for a permanent banking hub to be created to ensure people could still bank face-to-face.

The hubs offer basic services and access to cash and are shared by a number of high street banks which rotate offering their services during the week.

Lilith Holsey-Sheppard, co-owner of Butcher's Block, told BBC Hereford and Worcester the branch closures would "change things" and have a "knock-on effect" on the high street.

"Because there are people who would prefer to go into banks to handle their money," she explained. "My mum's the same."

"It's a social thing as well as a financial thing."

Resident Warren Palmer said he believed there should still be an option to talk to someone face-to-face as people relied on going into the bank to sort out any problems in person.

"Online banking is OK but it's an option. It's not the only way of doing it...I'd prefer to go into the bank."

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