Pensioner wins fightback in opposition to financial institution closures in small Scottish city

A campaigning pensioner, 73, who led the fightback against bank closures in a small Scottish town has brought one back.

Theresa Lee, from Huntly in Aberdeenshire, has successfully applied for a brand new in-person bank hub for all customers. 

Before this announcement, residents faced large queues at a Post Office counter inside a supermarket after branches such as TSB and Bank of Scotland left the area in 2021. 

The hub operated by LINK will provide a service, run by Post Office employees, where customers of any bank can withdraw and deposit cash, make bill payments and carry out regular banking transactions. 

Now delighted Ms Lee has revealed that when she heard the news she ‘spilt my tea’ and ‘nearly choked on my toast’.

The pensioner said: ‘I jumped clean off my seat – I was having my breakfast, I spilt my tea.

‘But I nearly choked on my toast. I’ve never had so much excitement in years.

‘At long last, some big company has listened to what people are asking them.’ 

In her ‘sales pitch’ Ms Lee, who won the town’s Rotary Citizen of the year award last year, emphasised that Huntly was a ‘thriving’ town with dozens of shops and businesses. 

The town’s high elderly population means that many still rely on in-person services in an age where banking and other services are more commonly operated online.

In 2023, Aberdeenshire Council found that Huntly has almost double the proportion of people aged 80 or over compared to Aberdeenshire as a whole.

Ms Lee said that elderly people are forced to make lengthy 45-minute car or bus journeys to Elgin to visit a bank branch or have to queue outdoors for mobile banking vans in all weathers.

Currently, local businesses also face an ‘absolutely horrendous’ situation when trying to deposit their takings at the Post Office, she added, with a long queue of customers behind them.

Huntly had previously been turned down twice for a banking hub, but this only made the Ms Lee more intent on winning her campaign. 

She said: ‘I think hearing it had been refused in the past just made me even more determined.

‘My dad used to call me a “thrawn” kid.

‘That’s a good Scots word, which means ‘stubborn as hell and won’t back down’.

‘So telling me not to bother because it’s already been refused, that was basically like a red rag to a bull.’

After the news was announced, members of the community took to social media to share positive comments about the hub and the difference it would make to their lives.

As well as making banking easier for the town’s population, the hub will also provide advice to customers on more complicated matters that require more specialist knowledge.

The new banking hub arrives in Huntley at a time when banks are closing across the Britain’s high streets. Across the nation, the number of banks has fallen from almost 15,000 in 1986 to less than 6,000 today.

The pace of closure has not slowed. Since 2022, 1,400 high street banks shut and in almost 400 cases, the branch was the last full-time financial institution in town. 

Barclays, which has 36million UK accounts, tops the list of closures after shutting 1,199 sites, according to analysis of 20 banks and building societies by consumer group Which?.

More closures are on the way after Lloyds Banking group announced it will shut branches from its Halifax, Bank of Scotland and Lloyds brands.

The closures will see 32 Halifax, 19 Lloyds and four Bank of Scotland locations close their doors for the final time next year.

This means more than 270 branches run by the group will close this year and the next – 128 at Lloyds, 119 Halifax and 45 Bank of Scotland locations – with the majority of the branches closing in England.