It’s a Wonderful Life—The World’s Local Bank Closes its Bay Doors

The Bay is in something of a state of shock this week as it hears the news that rumours of the impending closure of the single bank that serves the community are true. It is indeed about to close its doors.

HSBC which globally promotes itself as the ‘world’s local bank’ has announced its branch in Pevensey Bay will cease to do business on 3 December 2010.

The Bank represents a lifeline for local business, and people within the community wanting service with their monthly income and expenditure and advice about their precious small investments. All this looks about to be lost. We open the pages of Pevensey Bay Life today to the community to comment on the proposed closure. A spotlight feature gives full rein to Shirley MacKinnon, co-founder of PEVFEST to put her point of view.

Elsewhere in the county of Sussex, we note the involvement of MP for Worthing and Shoreham, Tim Loughton and his sterling work to lobby against the local closure of another branch of HSBC. We wait with interest to see what bearing his efforts will have on the actions of new Eastbourne MP Stephen Lloyd in relation to this closure.

Pevensey Bay Life views the closure as a very serious blow to the life of the community. We join with Derek French, of the Campaign for Community Banking Services, in saying that the time has come to lobby for change in the most vociferous fashion possible.

It is noteworthy, that the HSBC Bank was the only High Street Bank that did not have to go cap in hand to the Government to prop up its activities during the banking crisis. It therefore perhaps sees itself as ‘immunised’ in some way from the public pressure that is being forced on other parts of the banking system to maintain services and a lifeline to small communities. This sense of immunity should not be allowed to protect it from public criticism.

We also publicly join the growing lobby in the country for a root and branch re-appraisal of local banking systems and how they operate in small communities.

In America, in the light of the financial crisis that nearly brought down the world’s banking systems in 2008, legal stipulations were imposed on banks to provide banking services in small communities disadvantaged by the upheavals in the wider network of banking services. US banks, for example, that fail to carry out their duties properly, which includes the closing of doors to small communities, can be denied approval for business acquisitions or mergers.

In this new Age of Austerity, the time may well come when such moves will have to be made in this country. This time may well be after 3 December 2010, when it will be too late for the people of Pevensey Bay.

The lifeblood of any community is its people. Banks form part of that precious fabric. The heart does not stop pumping when the only bank in a village closes, but it does serve as something of a death knell when you take into account the wider business context.

New business wanting to move to establish services within the community will think again. Some small existing businesses may simply choose to shut up shop. People coming to live in the community want to know that a full range of services is available. Some of these people will re-consider such moves. Current residents who rely, not just on the lifeline that a bank provides, but on the personal support of staff within the bank to deliver a local service that is meaningful and useful to them in their daily business affairs are about to find themselves significantly disadvantaged.

The HSBC bank will not have considered holidaymakers and their needs to have access to a bank, an ATM and a full range of services within the Bay. It will be for local hardpressed business people with their holiday lets and B&B facilities to quietly spread the news to their seasoned clientele in the hope that it will not deter them from coming on their yearly pilgrimage to one of the acknowledged ‘hidden jewels in the crown of Sussex’.

Pevensey Bay Life reports the news of the closure with a sad heart. We recall the words of John Donne in 1624. Ask not for whom the belll tolls, it tolls for thee.

Thee, in this case means the policymakers of the World’s Local Bank. They have the power to look at their decisions in the light of wider concerns.

Banks themselves can only survive if people use them. If people in parts of the banking industry turn their backs on local communities, they can hardly be surprised if the perception of what they are doing has wider implications on the footfall in towns and cities. People sometimes boycott particular banks, wherever they choose to set out their stall, and they do it with good reason.

We will watch with interest to see what form the avowed pledge of the HSBC takes, in their promise to discuss these matters with local community leaders and residents.

We hope and pray, that they might just take a leaf out of their own book and look backwards to a time when their mission statement resonated a little louder with business people and the communities that they served.

Just for the record, in case they’ve forgotten, they used to be called the listening bank.

^{SIMON MONTGOMERY

Editor}