Walking down Roman Road yesterday I noticed that its Barclays branch is closing down. Come the middle of September it'll be gone.
Last bank standing, fallen.
It's a bit rich because when the Barclays on Bow Road closed in 2019 they made a big thing of the fact you could always go to the branch 0.7 miles away on Roman Road, but now they're closing that too.
Ah well, I thought, at least there's still a Nationwide.
I walked a bit further and blimey, that's closing too next month.
Which means Roman Road, Bow and indeed the entire E3 postcode will have no banks or building societies left whatsoever. Given that E3 has a population of just over 50,000, that's a lot of people to suddenly find themselves counter-free. We still have three post offices and a dozen free cash machines so the world of personal finance hasn't ended, but it's a bit of a surprise when your area goes bankless.
It's particularly rough given that Nationwide's current strapline is "Here today, here tomorrow", because they pledged to "every town and city in the UK that has a Nationwide branch that you’ll still have a branch until at least January 2023." However they've decided that promise doesn't apply in this case because Bow isn't a town or city but part of the wider community of Greater London.
Never mind, they say in their impact assessment, "in the case of Bow, we have five branches within a 3 mile radius". And while this is true the nearest of them is at Westfield and that's a 30 minute journey, or an hour's round trip, because distances in London are more about time than mileage.
Bow's 21st century problem is its proximity to Stratford, which still has two Barclays, two HSBCs, two Lloyds, two Nat Wests, a Santander, a Halifax and a Nationwide. Stratford'll be one of the very last places in London to go bank-free, so that's a local bonus. Meanwhile Canary Wharf still has seven banks/building societies, if you can get there, and the neighbourhood centre of Bethnal Green has five.
Totting up all the contenders there are still 17 banks and building societies in the borough of Tower Hamlets - population one third of a million - but mostly in two locations rather than conveniently spread.
London bank/building society closures 2021 Barclays: Acton, Brentford, Bow, Camberwell, Catford, Chadwell Heath, Cheapside, Chiswick, Deptford, East Barnet, Erith, Fleet Street, Hackney, Hainault, Hampstead Garden Suburb, Harringay, Highbury, Kentish Town, New Malden, Northwood, Park Lane, Plaistow, Ponders End, Shepherds Bush, Southampton Row, Stanmore, Strand, Surrey Docks, Temple Fortune, Welling, Westcombe Park, West Drayton, West Hampstead (33) HSBC: Barnet, Bexleyheath, Charing Cross, Eastcote, Edgware Road, Fenchurch Street, Fleet Street, Hackney, High Holborn, Kingsbury, Marylebone, Old Broad Street, Russell Square, Southgate, South Woodford, Streatham Hill, Surrey Quays, Whitechapel (18) Lloyds: Belvedere, Blackheath, East Dulwich, Gants Hill, Hendon, Kentish Town, Northwood, Regent Street (8) Nat West: Brixton, Croydon Centrale, Knightsbridge, Lambeth North, Portman Square (5) Santander: Balham, Barking, Beckenham, Bethnal Green, Bishopsgate, Camberwell, Catford, Chelsea, Chingford, Chiswick, Coulsdon, Dagenham, Dalston, Enfield Highway, Finchley, Fulham, Hanover Square, Harold Hill, Hayes, High Holborn, Hounslow Bath Road, Leytonstone, London Bridge, Mill Hill, Moorgate, New Malden, Norbury, Petts Wood, Pinner, Putney, Shepherds Bush, South Harrow, Southgate, Strand, Surbiton, Twickenham, Upper Edmonton, Welling, Wembley Preston Road, West Wickham (40) Nationwide: Bow, Clapham Junction, Crouch End, Kingsbury, Leyton, Putney, Selsdon, Sidcup, Threadneedle Street, Wanstead, Wealdstone, West Ealing (12) TSB: Acton, Barnet, Burnt Oak, Cockfosters, Eltham, Putney, Sutton (7) Halifax: Pinner, Plaistow, Upminster (3)
Nationwide tell us transactions at the Bow branch dropped 9.7% between 2015 and 2020 and that 73% of customers already have online banking. For Barclays it was a 14% fall between 2019 and 2020 and 89% using other ways of banking that triggered closure. Most customers will just sigh and go elsewhere. But a significant number of disadvantaged people are going to be significantly disadvantaged by these closures, as the threshold for keeping a bank branch open gets steadily higher and higher.
It's sad because the Nationwide on Roman Road always has always looked busy, indeed during lockdown you could tell by the sheer size of the queue outside that it was a lifesaver.
Four years ago Bow had three banks and a building society. After September it'll have none.
