Banking Hub for Hay

 There was a knock on the door this morning, while I was in the middle of watching an episode of Star Trek with my friend.

On the door step was Jane Dodds, the MS for this area, and another Lib Dem campaigner.  They wanted to drum up support for a banking hub for Hay.  

The last proper bank in Hay, Barclays, closed in 2018.  There used to be three bank branches in total, the others being Nat West and the Midland, which became Santander (and is now a clothes shop).  The Nat West send a van every fortnight, which parks outside the Cinema Bookshop for three quarters of an hour.

The idea of a Banking Hub is that several different banks share the same premises - so on Monday it's Barclays, on Tuesday it's Nat West, and so on. 

I was immediately enthusiastic, and so was my friend, who also came to the door to sign the petition.

At the moment, if I want cash I can go to the cash point at the Craft Centre, but it often runs out of money, and at the moment it is closed down until repairs can be made after someone tried to break into it.  The other option is the Post Office, which has taken on some of the functions of a bank branch.

If I want to do anything more complicated with my money, I have to take the bus into Hereford, which takes about an hour, and then I have to make sure I have other things to do in Hereford, because the X44 only runs, at best, every two hours (and not at all in the afternoons).  So what used to take me ten minutes at a local branch now takes me half a day.

I'm quite capable of organising online banking - I'm computer literate enough to have a blog, after all - but I refuse to do it.  I want to be able to go into a branch and speak to an actual human being who knows what they're doing, face to face.

So I have filled in the questionnaire they gave me, and I'm about to take it to the post box now.

For anyone who wants to join in the survey to say how the loss of banking services in Hay has affected them, they are also gathering information online at www.brlibdems.uk/HayHub

They will then take all the answers to the regulators to convince them that Hay needs a Banking Hub.