The Campaign for Community Banking Services (CCBS) dismisses as entirely predictable today’s announcement by the British Bankers’ Association that its ‘shared banking’ pilot scheme has failed to attract sufficient demand: this was always a scheme destined to fail. An opportunity to properly trial shared banking having been wasted, a return to mass branch closures can be expected in due course.

When the scheme was announced in November 2001 experts from CCBS and its member organizations including Consumers’ Association, Help the Aged, Federation of Small Businesses and the CPRE told the banks and the media that this flawed scheme could not be taken as any indicator of the national demand for branch sharing. The negative attitude of the banks towards consumer body participation in the planning of the scheme is deplored.

The danger now is that the banks will not trial other shared banking models in more appropriate urban and rural communities which could prevent the resumption of branch closures when the current informal moratorium ceases, which it inevitably will. The pilot scheme was also of no use to communities where the last bank had already closed.

The independent reviewer had no involvement in developing the pilot scheme and Professor Kempson states in her report that the evaluation can only assess the scheme as established; she acknowledges the CCBS argument that it is hard to extrapolate results from these sites to other locations.

The principal reason for the unsuitability of the 10 sites as a national test was the low potential pool of branch using customers of the other banks in the selected sole bank communities, for example in 9 cases the bank concerned had enjoyed a historic geographic monopoly or dominant position. The existence of the scheme was poorly promoted and many technical/operational obstacles were put in the way of potential users.

1. CCBS is a pressure group acting for 26 national organizations concerned about bank branch closure. Details can be found on our website: http://home.btclick.com/ccbs/index.htm
2. The BBA’s announcement can be found on: www.bba.org.uk
3. CCBS’s opposition to the scheme was set out in press releases available on our website (see above) under dates 13-3-03, 3-1-02, and 30-11-01.