The main achievement of the Treasury Select Committee’s probing inquiry into the explosive growth of fee charging cash machines is the raised profile of the issue which may slow down the banks’ efforts to divest themselves, for monetary reward, of unprofitable non-branch based ATMs to companies able to charge whatever the market will bear. In matters of detail and specific recommendations for action the outcome is disappointing and if the Treasury does not seize the moment in its response much of the MP’s efforts will have been wasted.

The Committee’s suggestion that reasonable local free access to cash should be a matter of public policy is welcomed, as is the call for improved transparency of the fee charging status of machines owned by the independents. That enforcement should be transferred from LINK to the Banking Code Standards Board is also worthy of consideration but a new Code is not due until March 2007.

The absence of a firm recommendation for the banks to assume joint responsibility for the provision of at least one free access site in communities where branches close is deplored and to leave monitoring of an obviously deteriorating situation to “government” and taskforces set up for other purposes amounts to an abdication of responsibility.

The attack on the Post Office is unjustified. It is the banks into which our salaries, wages and pensions are paid, not post offices, and it is the banks that have the responsibility to ensure that their reduction of branch networks is compensated for by reasonable levels of free access to our money via ATMs; if independent operators want to provide some of us with extra convenience, at a cost, that is all to the good. The Post Office’s new role as a competitor to the banks in the sale of own brand financial products presents a major obstacle to increasing access at post offices to the current accounts of the main high street banks.

Contact
Derek French
Hon Director
Tel : 01582 764760

www.communitybanking.org.uk