Friday’s closure of Keswick’s last bank, Barclays, was branded “disgusting” by a long-standing customer who said its removal would “cause havoc”.
Royal Navy veteran Taylor Singleton, 84, cut a frustrated figure as he emerged from the doomed branch.
“It’s disgusting,” he said. “I’ve been a customer for 20-odd years. I’ve just been in now, everything’s bust; computers are down, hole in the wall’s down. I just wanted some cash. I’ve been told to go down to the Post Office, but you can’t get a statement or anything like that there.
“It’s going to cause havoc in Keswick; a town of tourists who are looking for a hole in the wall.”
“To hell with that,” he said of alternative online apps being championed by banking giants. “To be honest, I don’t even have one of those damn mobile phones. I’ve got a landline, that’s all I need.
“I can’t understand it, that’s the last bank in Keswick now, all the others are shut. It’s a tourist town, it’s unbelievable. Folk will start going away if they can’t get any cash in Keswick, they’ll go elsewhere.”
Taylor, who lives just a stone’s throw away, said of online banking: “I won’t do it. I don’t know how to do it and I don’t intend to learn how to do it.”
He added: “A sign of the times? You give me the 1950s and 60s any day, they were a damn sight better than this. I was in the navy then. Everything was a lot easier. There were shops where you could buy fresh fish, gent’s clothes — you can’t even get a pair of underpants in Keswick now! But you can get anything for the fells, that sort of thing.”
Andrew Byrne is chair of Keswick’s market traders’ forum which represents 50 stallholders who display their wares on a Thursday and Saturday. The vast market, which has run for 800-plus years, extends right down Main Street.
“We’re worried, to be honest,” he said. “It’s the loss of the cash machine. From a traders’ point of view, it’s the last cash machine on the market and they’ve said they’re closing that. I’d still say the majority of the market trade is done by cash. I’m sure some of the traders still don’t take cards. The cash machine is very well used, from what I can hear it can run out, especially over a bank holiday weekend. There’s quite often a queue. It’s essential.
“Once the branch closes, the cash machine goes, the biggest fear is that we lose customers, simple as that.
“If somebody’s there, they want to spend £30 with you, neither of your card machines have any signal they’ll say: ‘I’ll go and get some cash’, but they may never return.”
Sarah Lawrence, 39, was on a five-day trip to Keswick with husband Andrew, children Alexander, aged five, and Sophie, 18 months, nephew Elias, also 18 months, and other family members from Newcastle and Teesside.
“We’re mostly using card, but there has been the odd occasion when the card machine hasn’t worked in a bar and my dad has had to find cash. He did have cash on him. If he hadn’t we’d have had to use the cash machine. And if that wasn’t available we’d be stuck. Here we haven’t had great (internet) signal at all, so with card machines I guess they struggle. Because we’ve come on holiday we have brought some cash and there’s plenty of us.”We potentially wouldn’t be able to if there was no cash machine at all.”
Mike Hodgson, spokesman for Keswick Launch on the shore of Derwentwater, said a town of 5,000 people actually had a population of generally 25,000 when visitors were taken into account.
“They’ve closed everything. There are no amenities. Police come from Cockermouth. No banks. Covid has increased the use of plastic instead of proper money. Since Covid it’s about 95 per cent card now. It used to be 15 to 20 per cent card, 80 per cent cash,” he said.
“I don’t like online banking at all, I think there’s too much interference. I like a face, I like to talk to people, go into a bank and see somebody. People will miss that big time.”
Mike’s message to Barclays: “I love the bank, I love the staff. I think it’s maybe time we paused things a little bit and took time to think. I’d like to see jobs preserved. All these big companies still making big money. You’re just a number on a computer but you’re a person face-to-face.”
One stallholder and Barclays customer who asked not to be named spoke of the closure being a “disaster” and of having to take an hour off work to deposit cash 14 miles away at the nearest branch in Cockermouth. “Bank manager was a good job 20 years ago; now they’re all redundant. I’ve got more security than they have,” he said.”
Town councillor Tony Lywood, 68, the area’s parliamentary candidate for Labour at the last election, has been a Barclays customer for quarter of a century.
“It’s been hugely important,” he said of the branch. “It’s where you do all your banking, where you can see people face to face, part of the community.
“Barclays made £5.2bn last year. This community has supported and been customers forever and in my view Barclays should pay that back to the people of Keswick and stay here. They haven’t done any research about what effect this is going to have to the people of Keswick.”
Barclays says the branch in Keswick will close at noon today. The branch is leasehold so the property will be returned to the freeholder once decommissioned.
A bank spokesperson said: “We hope to launch a new Barclays Local site in Keswick but have so far been unable to secure a location which can accommodate our business hours. We are continuing to look for new premises and we’ll let our customers know as soon as we have secured a site.”
