One of the biggest wins for North East Derbyshire last year was bringing banking back to Clay Cross for the first time in six years with the opening of a new banking hub. Since then, the banking hub has gone from strength to strength and the feedback from Clay Cross, Wingerworth, Tupton, North Wingfield and all the villages nearby has been really positive.
The banking hub is a huge step forward in ensuring that our high streets are viable and thriving and, just as importantly, that people have access to banking services right on their doorstep. Back when I first made the application on behalf of Clay Cross in late 2022, I couldn’t quite believe that I would see one open so soon and it’s just so wonderful to see it have such an impact on the town and the surrounding area.
The challenge is that it isn’t just Clay Cross that has issues in accessing banking services and at the same time as making an application in 2022 for Clay Cross, we also did the same for Dronfield, Eckington and Killamarsh, although they weren’t successful that time. Since then we’ve been working on trying to move this and see whether we can get any more banking hubs in our area.
Late last year we made a second application for Dronfield and Eckington with additional information about cash based businesses (which is one of the criteria for banking hubs), to see whether or not we could convince Cash Access UK (who are rolling these out) to bring a banking hub to one of these two towns, too. Unfortunately, neither of those applications have yet gone ahead - despite lots of pushing!
Recently I met with Cash Access UK again to talk about this in more detail and to go through why these applications hadn’t got past the threshold. The basic issue with Dronfield (please don’t shoot the messenger!) is that one of the rules for getting a banking hub is that there shouldn’t be bus services to another area where you can access a bank within 15 minutes. At the moment there is nominally a bus service to Meadowhead which allows people to access Barclays. For those of you who know this area well, I know just like you that is not a good alternative and I’ve made that case to Cash Access UK directly.
Similarly in Eckington, I’ve highlighted the loss of Lloyds and the importance of making progress there. Equally with Killamarsh, it’s important that they have access to good banking services, too.
At this moment in time, we haven’t been able to get these areas over the qualification thresholds for a banking hub - yet. Nonetheless, I’ve spoken to Cash Access UK and they are expecting some changes to those thresholds to come in the months ahead. As such, we’ve agreed to meet again in a few months time to see whether there is another opportunity to make the case for another banking hub/s in the area.
I will keep in touch, keep collecting the data and the evidence that is needed to show how important it is we get better banking services, not just in the south of North East Derbyshire but in the north as well.
As I’ve always said on infrastructure, we won’t get everything we want all of the time, but we’ve got to be in it to win it and the more we ask, the more we will get in time. I will keep pushing the case for better banking services in Dronfield, Eckington, Killamarsh and elsewhere and I hope that later in the year we might be able to have a breakthrough.
