Banks are closing branches across the UK. Post offices are disappearing. HMRC no longer offers local tax offices. Local authorities increasingly expect everything to be done online. Face-to-face support is becoming increasingly hard to find.
We are facing the disappearance of functioning communities, the loss of public services, and the growing assumption that efficiency matters more than people.
In this video, I ask why so many institutions are retreating from local life. Why is it becoming so difficult to get help with banking, tax, benefits, council services, or basic advice? Why are people increasingly expected to navigate complicated systems alone? And why are decisions being made that leave many people feeling excluded from the services on which they depend?
The people who most need help are often those who are being hit hardest. Older people, those without easy internet access, people dealing with complex tax, benefit or banking issues, and many others are finding that the support they once relied upon has simply disappeared. What was once available on a local high street now often requires endless telephone calls, online forms, automated systems, and frustrating delays.
I argue that the people making these decisions rarely experience the consequences themselves. They can afford professional advice. They do not spend hours in telephone queues. They are not excluded by digital systems. As a result, they often underestimate the human cost of withdrawing services from local communities.
I also propose a practical alternative: Public Finance Hubs. These would bring together banking services, HMRC, DWP, local authorities and Citizens Advice under one roof, restoring face-to-face support to every town and community. They would provide help when people need it, where they need it, and in a way that respects dignity, privacy and accessibility. And banks should be required to pay for them as a condition of their licence to operate here in the UK.
The real question is simple. Should public services serve people, or should people be expected to serve institutions?
And if banks and public bodies benefit from public support, should they not also have a responsibility to remain present in the communities that make their existence possible?
This is the audio version:
There is no Debate Ammunition for this video. Please accept my apologies.
This is the transcript:
Why do we have a bank crisis in the UK? Let me be clear. What I'm talking about is, why do we have a bank crisis in the form of our banks withdrawing from our villages, towns, and cities? Why are our banks fleeing our local communities, in other words? And why, too, are HM Revenue and Customs, the Post Office, and local authorities retreating as well? Why is it that advice is becoming so much harder to access? Why is face-to-face support disappearing everywhere? This is a real issue, and it is about much more than banking, important as that is.
The institutions we rely on are withdrawing from local life. Bank branches are closing across the country. Where I live, they're becoming coffee shops, or are standing empty. Post offices are disappearing from many communities, and HM Revenue and Customs no longer provides local support as a matter of policy. Whilst social security services have become increasingly remote, and local authorities assume everything can be done online.
But people still need real-world services and real-world help. Many people need somewhere to pay in cash and cheques. Some people need access to larger cash withdrawals than they want to make from an ATM and still feel safe. And many people need advice on banking issues. This stuff is complicated, just as tax forms and benefit claims are. And those people who need to do those things need help as well. And no one should be forced to pay for help, which is what government policy now seems to be.
Human support on a face-to-face basis still matters, and it's needed right across the UK. And that's especially so when the digital world excludes so many people. Automated systems can be confusing and intimidating, even for those who are tech literate, and not everyone is. Not everyone is confident about using online services, and many problems are easier to solve face-to-face. The result is people are becoming alienated from the essential services on which we all rely, and communities are losing places where help is available.
And this I stress is a crisis of community as much as it is one of banking service or other services. Essential institutions are abandoning local places. The people most in need are often the worst affected. And social infrastructure is being dismantled at cost to those most in need of it. Convenience for organisations is trumping public need, and communities are paying the price for the denial of services we enjoyed when we were apparently much worse off than we are today, and that makes no sense at all.
So, what we need or what I might call 'Public Finance Hubs', and we need these in every sizable community. My guess is that we need a public finance hub for every 15,000 or so people. Every town, suburb, or large village should have one. They should be located on accessible high streets. They should be easy to reach by public transport. And full access should be guaranteed for all users, and they should be open at least six days a week.
Banking should be at the centre of these hubs, and there should be employees there who can serve the customers of all banks. I don't expect every bank to be in the hub, but I expect there to be employees from banks who can advise anyone on the banking services they need and who can provide a basic banking service to them. Banking staff should always be available, in my opinion, in these hubs six days a week. Cash and cheques should be capable of being paid into your account. And advice should be available when people need it. Cash withdrawal facilities should always be a possibility. Support should be offered regardless of your bank affiliation. And banking should once again become a public service.
And public services should also be in one location, this public finance hub. HMRC staff should be available several times a week to provide tax assistance.
I think DWP staff should also be available to help with social security issues.
In both cases, the biggest problem that people face is filling in forms, and it should not be beyond these two organisations to provide people with help with form filling, which is what so many people need. No one should be denied the chance to get their taxes right, or the chance to claim a benefit to which they're entitled, because they can't get access to the support that they require on a face-to-face basis. And that's why these staff should be there.
At the same time, local authorities should also have a regular presence, not necessarily every day, but at least one day a week, so that people who need help with council tax and other services can also see someone face-to-face. And for the same reason, and because all of these organisations, banks, tax authorities, social security agencies, and local authorities all create problems for people, I think Citizens Advice should also be based in these hubs with facilities provided free of charge there, paid for by these other organisations.
And at the same time, there's something else to say as well. The people who somebody sees in these hubs should be able to provide direct telephone lines if they cannot provide the support a person wants. Nobody who goes to see someone in a hub should then be fobbed off with being told to call a general helpline. No, that's not good enough. They'll end up in those endless queues again, having to deal with AI to try to get to the right person. The hub should give a direct telephone line for somebody who should be able to help. We need to get back to the idea that people who need help should get it.
And vitally, inside all of this, we must respect people's dignity and privacy. So these places must be big enough that every meeting that requires to be held in private should be. Sensitive issues should be handled confidentially, and nobody should be forced to discuss personal matters in public. Services should be designed around people, then, and they should be accessible and respectful.
And who should pay for all of this? Banks should. They should be providing most of the funding for these hubs, although the Post Office might contribute a bit as well. Both operate under licence from the public, and public privilege should come with a public obligation to meet your customer. Service provision should be a licence condition, and staff should be trained to meet community needs, and don't tell me that's not possible, it is, and we have the people who are able to do it.
Don't also tell me this is too costly. We had these services, as I've already mentioned, when we were apparently much worse off than we are today. We had them in the 1980s. We had them when I was a child in the 1960s. We had them in the 1990s. We had them during the financial crisis of 2008, but now they've gone. Apparently, they're too costly now, but that is not a credible claim because UK banks make exceptional profits that make them amongst the most successful companies in the UK economy. They benefit from public support and legal privileges, but the community is being made to suffer for the fact that they are withdrawing from them.
Now, we should change this balance of priorities and providing service should become a part of their obligation to society for the opportunity that we provide them with to make profit. And their refusal to do so should become indefensible; if they refused, my condition would be that they would be denied their licence to operate in the UK economy.
And the fact is, we need to say this because we need to reestablish the priority of society inside our economy. Politicians increasingly talk about efficiency instead of people. Large organisations are withdrawing from local life because they don't value our society, and performance targets are set by all these organisations, public organisations like HMRC, political organisations like our government, and our large companies, and all of the people who choose these performance targets, which mean that they are withdrawing from our local communities, are people who can afford to buy all the advice they need. They have forgotten the human cost of their decisions, which have a real impact upon many people who have to live with fear and uncertainty as a result.
Communities are being treated as an expendable cost to be managed. That is unacceptable. The idea of service is being lost. It is not something that should be trashed by those who do not want to supply it. We should be requiring that people do supply service in exchange for their licence to operate. And that licence to operate is what these organisations require. All of them require public consent. Banks only exist because society permits them to. Public institutions depend upon the same principle, and their obligations should be matched by these responsibilities to be present in our communities.
Politicians should be enforcing this requirement. Failure to serve should have consequences and real costs attached by having licences withdrawn. Public finance hubs would restore the right priorities in our society and in our communities. They would put people before institutional convenience, and they wouldn't threaten profits because the cost of these would hardly dent our banks' bottom lines.
They would strengthen our communities. They would improve access to essential services. They would embody a politics of care. They would show that people come first again.
I think that matters. That's why I'm putting this idea forward. But what do you think? You might disagree. There's a poll down below. Let us have your comments. Like this video if that's what you do. And if you'd like to buy us a coffee so we can make more videos like this, well, that would be great. There's a link down below, and you can use that to make a donation.
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A community hub is a fantastic concept. There are still people who need face to face services.
I would also point out that British banks are far behind some of their European neighbours in terms of technology, so they’re not even satisfying the needs of the tech savvy. For example, most British banks don’t have an API retail customers can use (Starling is an exception here) and very few ATMs in the UK are contactless so not suitable for those of us who only carry phones.
Thank you
Agree with all. One wonders if the reduction in service levels (= speaking to humans face to face) is connected to the use of McKinseyites by the ogrs mentioned and the reduction of citizens to ciphers. The ghastly Thatcher claimed – “there is no such thing as society” – well this is a consequence of what passed for her “thinking” = “I’m alright Jack” (the rich) & “devil take the hindmost” (the poor/ us lot).
You can be sure that LINO & Burnt-ham will neither know nor care wrt this situation. Why should they? it does not affect them, & in any case, LINO is part “owned” by the banks (witness the witless Reeeves).
Much to agree with
Might this coordinated weakening of communities and individuals by lessening their access to money, infomation and power, be a facet of neoliberalism, perhaps as part of its central purpose of “centralising” wealth and power?
I think you are right
Last year I had to make largish “unusual payments” from two bank accounts. I knew they would be flagged and blocked so I went into town to the branches of the two banks, to make sure that the payments went through. The branch of the first bank authorised the payment and it went through correctly. The second bank also authorised the payment, but I was still notified 24 hours later that it had been blocked. so that I had to make a second trip into town. Even better, the second bank has now closed its only branch in a town with a population of 275,000. If I needed to do the same thing again, I would need to travel 15 miles to the nearest branch.
Look at Paul Seddon and Vanguard for inspiration on how to manage services and cut failure demand
My impression is that doctors surgeries are also desperate to abandon local communities. Having not visited the doctors for over ten years I could hardly be accused of being a burden on their services. I found out you can’t ring for an appointment, you have to fill out a multi page online application form, the underlying tone being, “are you sure you need a doctor?”
I don’t know how older people or the less tech savvy cope with it, it’s a ridiculously long form. Once you’ve filled out the application form, you wait a week or so for a text message giving you an appointment for three weeks later and details on how to cancel. During that three weeks you get a text message twice a week reminding you how you can cancel the appointment.
It appears that whole of society is going the way of having as little personal interaction with the great unwashed as possible.
This is not my experience at all.
Our surgery uses ‘Ask my GP’ and it is simple, and quick. The wait is usually less than an hour. They also answer the phine – and provide same day appointments when needed.
My suggestion? Change GP, if you can.
In Italy the Post Office remains a core state institution. It villages and towns they are being termed into digital and physical hubs to provide support in accessing digital/government services. The post office has also invested into an an single platform app where multiple services can be accessed in one place. Not the multiple channels and protocols we negotiate to access Government services. The Italian Post Office is also being used to drive decarbonisation
The retention of the Post Office in rural villages has been a social policy to help anchor many rural communities that has have seen long term population decline.
https://tgposte.poste.it/en/2025/07/22/polis-services-and-digital-innovation-how-poste-creates-value-and-supports-italy/
Brilliant! What we need
Begging the question – does the UK state EVER look at what happens (& why) in other countries?
My experience suggests NOT.
Perhaps a policy that the Greens could adopt – root & branch. Copy the Italians. LINO never will (ditto Deform).
Agreed.
It’s a real winner – and core to their localism agenda.
With the latest retrenchment of local authorities with the ‘combined authority initiative’ your post cannot come soon enough. I totally agree with your opinion – I have lost track of how many calls I get out of the blue from people who either cannot get what they want or have been passed from pillar to post at the council I work for.
What works is proximity – being near each other – it’s one of those things I learnt from New Labour’s work in Northern Ireland where deadly enemies were encouraged to meet and discuss peace. That helped each side to see each other as human beings, acknowledge each other and their needs and well, much progress was made.
There is also a pedagogical side to this that is being lost for orgs’ as well – learning about what your customers need, looking for opportunities to meet need etc.
The way things are going, there is a certain ‘detachment’ being encouraged. This is bad for both providers and users. For the latter their perception of these services feed into service sustainability – if they cannot feel or perceive these services, public support for them is further eroded and a cycle of further retrenchment is well and truly ground into the system until it stops all together.
Much to agree with
My GP is pretty good as well
Good article, good idea. In South Wales, local council has community hubs in main towns. A finance hub would be so useful. Local tax offices were so handy when you had a query; now, I have corresponded by letter because phone hopeless and my payment had not been acknowledged months after I made it. I was told by letter they had received it, but it wasn’t credited to my account yet, so my online account still said I owed them. So if thwarted, resort to pen and ink!
Good luck
A couple of points:
1. I hypothesise that productivity has dropped in this country as we are all spending hours on the phone waiting for it to be answered / to speak with a human; or doing jobs that have been outsourced to ourselves -eg supermarket checkouts. So the shareholders increase THEIR profits by having fewer staff, and we spend more of our time unproductively.
2. Due to funding cuts 15 years ago, I remember a few citizen’s advice bureaux in the south east moved into hub spaces with other services.
3. Digital everything is discriminatory. Blind, dyslexic, learning difficulties, elderly, no internet access / smartphone or where English is not the first language etc are just a few of the hurdles. Public services or private companies that provide public services legally have to provide an alternative to digital only as they are breaking Equality Law if they do not.
If we want vulnerable, excluded people protected, those of us who have agency, a voice and a choice can help by not choosing digital first and challenging organisations to provide alternatives. I frequently use “you are discriminating against me because I’m elderly” phrase to ensure alternative channels are kept open, hoping this benefits those who do not have the confidence to pursue their rights.
Much to agree with
Hi Richard, great idea. Wondering if you are in contact with Plaid Cymru to discuss ideas like this and other ways they can rapidly bring better public services to Wales? I’m sure they will welcome positive dialogue about this sort of thing.
There was some contact, but it never came to anything.
That’s unfortunate Richard. I’ve been following you on YouTube for awhile and find your analysis of the issues and suggestions for better policy useful and enlightening. As Plaid Cymru have now for the first time the opportunity to lead the government in Wales I had the thought that this kind of initiative is just the kind of thing (and there will be many others) that they could get a hold of and take steps to put in place, to demonstrate how things really can be done differently and better for us all. Look forward to hearing more of your ideas and hope that some of them will find fertile ground, especially where real opportunity opens up (such as with a new Plaid Cymru government in Wales with a fresh approach).
I would be happy to work with PC.
They seem to believe in a politics of care – and have th chance to delover it.
It’s been really bad in Devon, a county with lots of older people who are not IT literate for years. It’s 10 miles to my nearest physical bank in Exeter. Cullompton with approx 10,000 population and a much wider visiting population hasn’t had any banks for years and had no post office for 2 years. And this is an area where many pensioners still use cash! We have a great post office open 7 days/week in our village shop, which is brilliant.
I’m highly IT literate but had a serious fraud issue on my tax account and spent many hours queueing on phone lines with no case management. In the good old days I would have physically visited a tax office. My frustration is not only having to deal with a call centre but having to repeat the same information each time and been promised things that didn’t happen.
The excuse that people prefer the internet doesn’t wash. I happily bank online, but a lot down here don’t and have to catch 2bus to Exeter for quite basic banking activities.
Thanks
There’s been a raft of bank branch closures in Highland recently, but I’d not realised quite how bad it has got. I compiled a list, simplifying banking groups to get –
Inverness: BoS, Nationwide, Barclays, RBS, Santander
Thurso: BoS, RBS, Santander
Portree: BoS
Fort William: BoS
Ullapool: RBS
Alness: RBS
That’s bank branches in 6 towns only for an area significantly larger than Wales.
I also note that many list distances to the branch as the crow flies, when in reality the driving distance can be twice that
Thanks
Richard, I have been saying to people that there should be shared financial hubs for quite a while now. It is a great idea idea. I also think that if we started a petition and got the thousands of signatures required, it would have to be debated in Parliament! Let’s get our local MPs also involved and everyone could share the idea.
I would be happy to sign.
Hello Richard.
I wonder how much it costs in total for businesses and government in the U.K., to licence (rent) the products of tech companies that facilitates all this? I don’t just mean the mega tech companies either. All tech.
Without advocating a return to pigeon-post or quill and ink, I feel there is a situation of the tail wagging the dog, where tech companies find a way to replace absolutely everything with a ‘service’ provided by them, that, in fact, works better without their intervention. You know, maybe it would be cheaper just having a a human answer a phone directly, or use a pencil and paper to write something down? Heaven forbid!
So, basically I’m questioning on a cost basis. Is it actually cheaper to ‘licence’ (rent) absolutely everything from tech companies, or would it be cheaper and more efficient to have much more low-tech, Human Intelligence within our systems?
I don’t know.
I suspect the government would not say.
I suspect the Government has not asked. I’m reminded of Shashi Verma, the head of technology who asked how much it was costing to collect fares via Oyster Cards. The Oyster Card, introduced in 2003 was deemed a huge success in simplifying ticketing, improving passenger flows at barriers and improving customers experience. He preserved with his question until he was presented with the unexpected answer. 15% (Fifteen percent).
No one had known as nobody has asked the question.
Armed with this shocking new information he asked the question of academics (MIT as it happens) ‘how could we significant reduce this cost’. Academics in these situations are usually used to validate a solution. The answer was to find a way to enable payment using a card every passenger already had. A bank card. That in turn lead developing the countless payments protocol which has been adopted and used around the world.The
The tap-in, tap-out payment across all modes of public transport in London we are now familiar was introduced in 2012. First on bank card then extended to smart devices.
TfL designed and coded the contactless payment system in-house, for just £11 million, finding existing commercial solutions inflexible or too focused on retail rather than transport. Those development costs were more than recouped by subsequent licencing of the technology.
Thank you
https://www.postoffice.co.uk/bankinghubs
They do exist in places. My local one has a confidential boxroom inside where you can privately talk to a member of staff of your bank on the day they are present.
I live in a town with no banks
I am 84 a d find it very Difficult
Nobody cares these day you are just left to cope the best you can
Thank you
Good luck
It really doesn’t have to be like this. In Taiwan for example there are over 13,000 locally operated convenience stores, such as 7-eleven and FamilyMart franchises, across the country. At any convenience store you can not only buy food and daily items etc but you can pay bills, get cash, ship packages, print documents, order hot food, buy train tickets, pick up online shopping, get medical masks, mail a postcard, top up your phone, wash your clothes, call a taxi, and sometimes even enjoy a sit-down dinner.
Furthermore Taiwan’s equivalent of high streets have a much greater prevalence of local businesses. That said there are large stores such as Costco but these have not displaced the local businesses.
It raises the uncomfortable question of why UK policy has allowed everyday services to retreat online or out of reach, when places like Taiwan show how easily they can be embedded into the fabric of daily neighbourhood life.
At present, it is not clear to me that any political party, including the Greens, is committed to reversing this trend.
Agreed
A couple of things (as ever, superb post)
Am dealing with solicitors at the moment and all I get is emails – with language that is pure legal speak and that IF I could get a face to face, I would ask and query in simple lay man language. But no. This is why I prefer face to face meetings be it healthcare and banking etc.
It’s hell waiting on a phone line for hours only then to be passed over to others and then I have been talking to someone, they went off the phone and had to start the whole sage again, from scratch.
Aren’t Nationwide ‘boasting’ they won’t close any branches till 2028 – like they are doing us a favour, staying open.
Humans come last, again.
Someone, somewhere wants less accountability, more profit and less solidarity between people.
When I ran a professional firm it took me a long time to train staff to answer a client’s real concerns in plain English. The necessary gobbledygook went in appendices. It took six months to retrain someone to do this. Clients liked it. No one ever sued.
I’ve said it before and will very probably say it again:
Sesquipedalian obfuscation unsuccessfully disguises it’s proponents intellectual deficiencies.
I live in a town of 30,000 in Oxon. There are 10 bank branches in town, all but one in the centre. I took a quick look at Oxford and Reading, populations 150,000 + and there are also about 10 bank branches, all but one congregated in the centre. Nothing even in well heeled suburbs like Caversham or Summertown, who accommodate lots of professionals and pensioners with money who are no doubt all tech-capable. I take it from this that banks are mainly interested in student and business accounts and banking for tourists/visitors. The suburbs can go hang whether they are poor or rich. I assume there are so many branches in my small town because it is a regional hub. Other might like to explore their own towns, cities and hinterlands.
Withdrawal of community based services is one side of the coin. Punitive fines, charges and sanctions on individuals who mess up is the other side of the coin, I guess.
And from next January the service if landlines comes to an end.
Quite how people who don’t use mobiles are meant to survive I don’t know.
And what happens when there is a national emergency? How do we help these people? Or ourselves?
I gather that phone companies do not have to get planning permission for their horrible masts as part of a deal that in a national emergency, the Government can take over the phone communication systems.
We are all well and truly up a creek without a paddle.
You can still have a ‘landline’ phone which plugs into a router. And keep your telephone number.
But that hardly solves the problem.
I have a handset that plugs into a router. I can do that because I have a broadband subscription. The reason in my case is my wife’s illness makes it almost impossible for her to use a mobile/smart phone. The cost of using a handset is prohibitive, every outgoing call is charged by the minute at the full rate. Broadband telephony is therefore not an option or even a possibility for an elderly, disabled or poor person, and I see many of those every day, even though I live in a prosperous area.
Glad you mentioned this. RBS-messed up account…BOS-forgot to pay a bill…TSB-closed local branch…closed next town branch..closed next branch edge of Glasgow…have to drive in and find parking…need to see a member of staff if you want to close an account…sold to Santander..no branch in town.Car 20 years old in perfect nick..not ulez compliant so cannot drive into Glasgow…If you are disabled…not IT literate..no mobile….tough mate…I spend my time out thinking them…BSc in computing…mobile 17 years old but works for online banking…ignore ulez.. Great to be 80 and block all attempts to make my life difficult.No wonder our island is called treasure island..not for the natives though….. (I won’t mention the doctor..whoever that is…. another tale for another day…)
Thank you for your excellent article.
Thank you, too
Not sure that I would style it is banks abandoning use – banks have always adjusted their business model to ensure maximum profitability and the closure of physical service operations is just another of those adjustments. It is in the nature of their business that banks have never voluntarily acted in the interests of their customers or clients except where that has been a byproduct of maximising revenue and profitability.