25th January 2012

BEAMINSTER: Concern for businesses as town loses HSBC bank

By Paul Crompton

BEAMINSTER is set to keep its cash machine when high street bank HSBC pulls out of the town.

Councillors and business leaders welcomed the announcement that the bank would operate an ATM machine in the town.

Beaminster will be left with no banking facility when HSBC closes on May 11th.

But, HSBC has said leaving the ATM is subject to finding a suitable location or gaining planning permission to build a kiosk in the town.

Customers of the Beaminster branch were told of the bank’s decision to close the branch by letter on January 16th.

District Councillor Rebecca Knox made the announcement during a town council meeting.

She said: “The HSBC ATM has been saved which is fabulous. It will remain in Beaminster either where it is or a new location has to be found.”

Council chairman Gilbert Berry said: “There must be an alternative option to allow us to keep a banking facility in Beaminster. If all our businesses have to go to all the way to Bridport to bank it will be inconvenient as well as costly.”

Business leaders had previously voiced concern the town’s shops, pubs and B&Bs would suffer if potential customers could not withdraw money in the town.

Currently 60 per cent of Beaminster’s Chamber of Commerce members bank with HSBC, said the chamber’s chairman Nigel Reeve.

Business owners now face having to travel more than six miles to Bridport to the nearest branch of HSBC.

Mr Reeve said the chamber would now campaign to bring another banking facility to the town.

He said: “I think firstly the fact the cash machine is saved is fantastic news but there’s a danger of confusing that with having a banking facility in the town.

“The chance of saving the HSBC branch is remote, almost impossible, but we now have to launch a co-ordinated campaign to bring a banking facility to Beaminster and I think that’s different to the cash machine.”

James Thorpe, an HSBC spokesman, said: “There’s no ATM in Beaminster so we are looking at leaving one subject to finding a suitable location and gaining planning consent.

“It has to be somewhere local residents are ok with and our security teams are ok to deliver cash there.”

The decision to close the branch was taken because it only opened for 15 hours a week on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays and HSBC was left without options to make it viable, said Mr Thorpe.

He said: “We will spend £60-£100million in our branch network and that could mean opening longer, more facilities in the branch and we will do that in some branches but if we don’t think that will increase the footfall we will look to reduce hours.

“But with the Beaminster branch open only 15 hours, the things we can do to maintain the service has reduced so we didn’t have that many options.

“When a branch is not being used enough then we will look for options but in this case we didn’t have any more options.”